单选题 The heart bypass (心脏搭桥术)has become part of our cultural life. It has come to seem like a ceremony of passage for the successful male, a red symbol of courage in midlife. Six hundred thousand bypass operations are performed a year in the United States. After a bypass, most heart patients experience significant relief from the peculiar discomfort in the chest caused by insufficient blood to the heart muscle. In some cases the surgery can dramatically extend life. American heart patients, who now number about 12 million, are enthusiastic about the surgery. Bypass is one of the most common major operations in America.
In private, however, many of my fellow workers in medicine suspect that bypass has become too popular. A recent Harvard study showed that as many as two-thirds of patients referred for bypass don't need it or could have it postponed. In Canada and Britain, where physicians perform bypass surgery much less frequently than they do in America,heart patients fare just as well. In addition, bypassing a blocked section of an artery does nothing to ;prevent the artery (动脉) from getting clogged somewhere else. In fact, bypass surgery can accelerate the development of new blockage.
But bypass did not have to prove itself. It has become hugely popular. Voices of caution were drowned out as more and more hospitals raced to offer bypass. By 1979,100 000: bypasses a year were taking place, and 10 years later the figure has risen to 260 000. Medical students were keen to train in cardiac (心脏的) surgery; for all the hard training, it was a advancing ,challenging field. In fact, the rewards are handsome. There is more money to be made performing this surgery than there is in practicing in almost any other field of medicine.
The idea of bold surgeons reaching into our bodies to save a wounded heart cannot but exert a powerful grip on our imaginations, as if we are witnessing a cultural ceremony where two overachieving individuals—surgeon and patient—come together, Bypass may indeed be both a life-extending and pain-relieving procedure for many patients. But perhaps it has transfixed us for too long.

单选题 According to the passage, a bypass surgery is ______.

单选题 From the second paragraph, we can see that the author is ______.

单选题 What conclusion can we come to, according to the passage?

单选题 Bypass operation has become very popular in the United States because ______.

单选题 In the third paragraph, the word "handsome" actually mean ______.

单选题 In the last paragraph the author implies that ______.