单选题According to the text, the optimistic mood seems to be

单选题Concerning the nature/nurture controversy, the writer of this article______.

单选题Experts have long pointed out that in the face of car-ownership explosion,______

单选题Digital photography is still new enough that most of us have yet to form an opinion about it (1) develop a point of view. But this hasn’t stopped many film and computer fans from agreeing (2) the early conventional wisdom about digital cameras — they’re neat (3) for your PC, but they’re not suitable for everyday picture taking. The fans are wrong. More than anything else, digital cameras are radically (4) what photography means and what it can be. The venerable medium of photography (5) we know, it is beginning to seem out of (6) with the way we live. In our computer and camcorder (7) , saving pictures as digital (8) and watching them on TV is no less practical — and in many ways more (9) than fumbling with rolls of film that must be sent off to be (10) . Paper is also terribly (11) . Pictures that are incorrectly framed, (12) , or lighted are nonetheless committed to film and ultimately processed into prints. The digital medium changes the (13) . Still images that are (14) digitally can immediately be shown on a computer (15) , a TV screen, or a small liquid crystal display (LCD) built right into the camera. And since the points of light that (16) an image are saved as a series of digital bits in electronic memory, (17) being permanently etched onto film, they can be erased, retouched, and transmitted (18) . What’s it like to (19) with one of these digital cameras? It’s a little like a first date — exciting, confusing and fraught with (20) .

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on Answer Sheet 1. "We want Singapore to have the X-factor, that buzz that you get in London, Paris, or New York." That is how Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore's prime minister,{{U}} (1) {{/U}}his government's decision to{{U}} (2) {{/U}}gambling in the country,{{U}} (3) {{/U}}two large, Vegas-style casinos. Whether the casinos will indeed help to transform Singapore's staid image remains to be seen. But the decision bas already{{U}} (4) {{/U}}an uncharacteristic buzz among the country's normally{{U}} (5) {{/U}}citizens. The government has contemplated, and rejected{{U}} (6) {{/U}}casinos several times in the past. One reason was{{U}} (7) {{/U}}Singapore's economic growth was so rapid that casinos seemed like an unnecessary evil. Buddhism and Islam, two of the country's main religions,{{U}} (8) {{/U}}on gambling. The government itself has traditionally had strong, and often{{U}} (9) {{/U}}, ideas about how its citizens should behave. Until recently, for example, it refused to{{U}} (10) {{/U}}homosexuals to the civil service. It also used to{{U}} (11) {{/U}}chewing gum, which it considers a public nuisance. Nowadays,{{U}} (12) {{/U}}, Singapore's electronics industry, the mainstay of the economy, is struggling to cope with cheap competition from places like China. In the first quarter of this year, output{{U}} (13) {{/U}}by 5.8% at an annual rate. So the government wants lo promote tourism and other services to{{U}} (14) {{/U}}for vanishing jobs in manufacturing. Merrill Lynch, an investment bank,{{U}} (15) {{/U}}the two proposed casinos could{{U}} (16) {{/U}}in as much as $4 billion in the initial investment alone.{{U}} (17) {{/U}}its estimates, they would have annual revenues of{{U}} (18) {{/U}}$3.6 billion, and pay at least $600 million in taxes and fees. The government, for its part, thinks the integrated{{U}} (19) {{/U}}, as it coyly calls the casinos, would{{U}} (20) {{/U}}as many as 35,000 jobs.

单选题It can be inferred from the passage that a relativistic view of ethics

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Reading the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. {{B}}Text 1{{/B}} On a weekday night this January, thousands of flag-waving youths packed Olaya Street, Riyadh's main shopping strip, to cheer a memorable Saudi victory in the GCC Cup football final. One car, rock music blaring from its stereo, squealed to a stop, blocking an intersection. The passengers leapt out, clambered on to the roof and danced wildly in front of the honking crowd. Having paralyzed the traffic across half the city, they sped off before the police could catch them. Such public occasion was once unthinkable in the rigid conformist kingdom, but now young people there and in other Gulf states are increasingly willing to challenge authority. That does not make them rebels: respect for elders, for religious duty and for maintaining family bonds remain pre-eminent values, and premarital sex is generally out of the question. Yet demography is beginning to put pressure on ultra-conservative norms. After all, 60% of the Gulf's native population is under the age of 25. With many more of its citizens in school than in the workforce, the region faces at least a generation of rocketing demand for employment. In every single GCC country the native workforce will double by 2020. In Saudi Arabia it will grow from 3.3m now to over 8m. The task of managing this surge would be daunting enough for any society, but is particularly forbidding in this region, for several reasons. The first is that the Gulf suffers from a {{U}}lopsided{{/U}} labor structure. This goes back to the 1970s, when ballooning oil incomes allowed governments to import millions of foreign workers and to dispense cozy jobs to the locals. The result is a two-tier workforce, with outsiders working mostly in the private sector and natives monopolizing the state bureaucracy. Private firms are as productive as any. But within the government, claims one study, workers are worth only a quarter of what they get paid. Similarly, in the education sector, 30 years spent keeping pace with soaring student numbers has taken a heavy toll on standards. The Saudi school system, for instance, today has to cope with 5m students, eight times more than in 1970. And many Gulf countries adapted their curricula from Egyptian models that are now thoroughly discredited. They continue to favor rote learning of "facts" intended to instill patriotism or religious values. Even worse, the system as a whole discourages intellectual curiosity. It channels students into acquiring prestige degrees rather than gaining marketable skills. Of the 120,000 graduates that Saudi universities produced between 1995 and 1999, only 10,000 had studied technical subjects such as architecture or engineering. They accounted for only 2% of the total number of Saudis entering the job market.

单选题The pursuit of information has been a human preoccupation since knowledge was first recorded. In the 3rd century BC Ptolemy stole every (1) scroll from passing travellers to (2) his great library in Alexandria. After 2001 America (3) a program to compile as many data as possible about just about everything. Since 1996 Brewster Kahle has been (4) all the content on the web as a not-for-profit (5) called the "Internet Archive". It has (6) expanded to software, films, audio recordings and scanning books. There has always been more information than people can mentally process. The disparity between the amount of information and man's ability to deal with it may be (7) , but that need not be a cause for (8) Our sensory and attentional systems are tuned to be (9) People find patterns to compress information and make it manageable. (10) Commander Schmorrow does not think that man will be (11) by robots. "The flexibility of the human to consider as-yet-unforeseen (12) during critical decision-making, go (13) the gut when problem-solving under uncertainty and other such (14) reasoning behaviours will not be readily replaced by a computer," he says. The (15) of data now available is a resource, similar to other resources and even to technology itself. (16) , resources and technologies are neither good nor bad; it depends on how they are (17) . In the age of big data, computers will be monitoring more things, making more decisions and even (18) improving their own processes--and man will be left with the same (19) he has always faced. (20) T.S. Eliot asked: "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?/

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} When a disease of epidemic proportions rips into the populace, scientists immediately get to work, trying to locate the source of the affliction and find ways to combat it. Oftentimes, success is achieved, as medical science is able to isolate the parasite, germ or cell that causes the problem and finds ways to effectively kill or contain it. In the most serious of cases, in which the entire population of a region or country may be at grave risk, it is deemed necessary to protect the entire population through vaccination, so as to safeguard lives and ensure that the disease will not spread. The process of vaccination allows the patient's body to develop immunity to the virus or disease so that, if it is encountered, one can {{U}}ward it off naturally{{/U}}. To accomplish this, a small weak or dead strain of the disease is actually injected into the patient in a controlled environment, so that his body's immune system can learn to fight the invader properly. Information on how to penetrate the disease's defenses is transmitted to all elements of the patient's immune system in a process that occurs naturally, in which genetic information is passed from cell to cell. This makes sure that, should the patient later come into contact with the real problem, his body is well equipped and trained to deal with it, having already done so before. There are dangers inherent in the process, however. On occasion, even the weakened version of the disease contained in the vaccine proves too much for the body to handle, resulting in the immune system succumbing, and, therefore, the patient's death. Such is the case of the smallpox vaccine, designed to eradicate the smallpox epidemic that nearly wiped out the entire Native American population and killed massive numbers of settlers. Approximately 1 in 10,000 people who receives the vaccine contract the smallpox disease from the vaccine itself and dies from it. Thus, if the entire population of the United States were to receive the Smallpox Vaccine today, 3000 Americans would be left dead. Fortunately, the smallpox virus was considered eradicated in the early 1970's, ending the mandatory vaccination of all babies in America. In the event of a reintroduction of the disease, however, mandatory vaccinations may resume, resulting in more unexpected deaths from vaccination. The process, which is truly a mixed blessing, may indeed hide some hidden curses.

单选题Disability among the elderly has declined markedly in the United States in the past two decades. In 1984, 25 percent of the elderly population reported difficulty with activities associated with independent living. By 1999, the share had fallen to 20 percent, a decline of one-fifth. Although these basic facts are well known, their interpretation is not clear. Is the reduction in disability a result of improved medical care, individual behavioral changes, environmental modifications that allow the elderly to better function by themselves, or other demographic changes? Will the trend continue, or is it time limited? What does the reduction in disability mean for years of healthy life and labor force participation? The researchers David Cutler, Mary Beth Landrum, and Kate Stewart focus on disability caused by cardiovascular disease to investigate the role of improved medical care on reductions in disability. By looking at just one condition, they can analyze health shocks and their outcomes in some detail. Cardiovascular disease is a natural condition to analyze, because it is the most common cause of death in the United States and most other developed countries. Also, more is spent on cardiovascular disease than on any other condition, clearly a case where medical care could really matter. The researchers measure disability as the presence of impairments in. Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs). Their data source, the National Long-Term Care Survey(NLTCS) , includes information on six ADL measures: eating, getting in or out of bed, walking around inside, dressing, bathing, and getting to or using the toilet. There are also questions about eight IADL measures: doing light housework or laundry, preparing meals, shopping for groceries, getting around outside, managing money, taking medications, and making telephone calls. The NLTCS is a nationally representative longitudinal survey of the health and disability profile of the population aged 65 and over. Cutler and his co-researchers find that reduced disability associated with cardiovascular disease accounts for a significant part of the total reduction in disability--between 14 and 22 percent. The evidence suggests that improvements in medical care, including both increased use of relevant procedures and pharmaceuticals, led to a significant part of this decline in disability. Regions with higher use experienced substantial reductions in mortality and disability. While precise data on the implications of reduced disability are lacking, the possible impact of disability reductions is staggering. The researchers estimate that preventing disability after an acute cardiovascular event can add as much as 3.7 years of quality-adjusted life expectancy, or perhaps $ 316,000 of value. The cost of this outcome is significantly smaller. The initial treatment costs range from $ 8,610 to $ 16,332, depending on the procedure used. Further, recent cost analyses reported that annual Medicare spending was lower for the non-disabled than the disabled, which suggests that higher treatment costs may be offset by lower future spending among a more healthy population. By virtually any measure, therefore, the researchers conclude that medical technology after acute cardiovascular episodes is worth the cost.

单选题As used in the last sentence, the word "drains" means ______.

单选题Michael Porter, who has made his name throughout the business community by advocating his theories of competitive advantages, is now swimming into even more shark-infested waters, arguing that competition can save even America's troubled health-care system, the largest in the world. Mr. Porter argues in " Redefining Health Care" that competition, if properly applied, can also fix what ails this sector. That is a bold claim, given the horrible state of America's health-care system. Just consider a few of its failings: America pays more per capita for health care than most countries, but it still has some 45m citizens with no health insurance at all. While a few receive outstanding treatment, he shows in heart-wrenching detail that most do not. The system, wastes huge resources on paperwork, ignores preventive care and, above all, has perverse incentives that encourage shifting costs rather than cutting them outright. He concludes that it is "on a dangerous path, with a toxic combination of high costs, uneven quality, frequent errors and limited access to care. " Many observers would agree with this diagnosis, but many would undoubtedly disagree with this advocacy of more market forces. Doctors have an intuitive distrust of competition, which they often equate with greed, while many public-policy thinkers argue that the only way to fix America's problem is to quash the private sector's role altogether and instead set up a government monopoly like Britain's National Health Service. Mr. Porter strongly disagrees. He starts by acknowledging that competition, as it has been introduced to America's health system, has in fact done more harm than good. But he argues that competition has been introduced piecemeal, in incoherent and counter-productive ways that lead to perverse incentives and worse outcomes:" health-care competition is not focused on delivering value for patients," he says. Mr. Porter offers a mix of solutions to fix this mess, and thereby to put the sector on a genuinely competitive footing. First comes the seemingly obvious (but as yet unrealized ) goal of data transparency. Second is a redirection of competition from the level of health plans, doctors, clinics and hospitals, to competition "at the level of medical conditions, which is all but absent". The authors argue that the right measure of "value" for the health of treatment, and what the cost is for that entire cycle. That rightly emphasizes the role of early detection and preventive care over techno-fixes, pricey pills and the other failings of today's system. If there is a failing in this argument, it is that he sometimes strays toward naive optimism. Mr. Porter argues, for example, that his solutions are so commonsensical that private actors in the health system could forge ahead with them profitably without waiting for the government to fix its policy mistakes. That is a tempting notion, but it falls into a trap that economists call the fallacy of the $ 20 bill on the street. If there really were easy money on the pavement, goes the argument, surely previous passers-by would have bent over and picked it up by now. In the same vein, if Mr. Porter's prescriptions are so sensible that companies can make money even now in the absence of government policy changes, why in the world have they not done so already? One reason may be that they can make more money in the current sub- optimal equilibrium than in a perfectly competitive market--which is why government action is probably needed to sweep aside the many obstacles in the way of Mr. Porter's powerful vision.

单选题Wherever people have been, they have left waste behind, which can cause all sorts of problems. Waste often stinks, attracts vermin and creates eyesores. More seriously, it can release harmful chemicals into the soil and water when dumped, or into the air when burned. And then there are some really nasty forms of industrial waste, such as spent nuclear fuel, for which no universally accepted disposal methods’ have thus far been developed. Yet many also see waste as an opportunity. Getting rid of it all has become a huge global business. Rich countries spend some $120 billion a year disposing of their municipal waste alone and another $150 billion on industrial waste. The amount of waste that countries produce tends to grow in tandem with their economies, and especially with the rate of urbanization. So waste firms see a rich future in places such as China, India and Brazil, which at present spend only about $5 billion a year collecting and treating their municipal waste. Waste also presents an opportunity in a grander sense: as a potential resource. Much of it is already burned to generate energy. Clever new technologies to turn it into fertiliser or chemicals or fuel are being developed all the time. Visionaries see a world without waste, with rubbish being routinely recycled. Until last summer such views were spreading quickly. But since then plummeting prices for virgin paper, plastic and fuels, and hence also for the waste that substitutes for them, have put an end to such visions. Many of the recycling firms that had argued rubbish was on the way out now say that unless they are given financial help, they themselves will disappear. Subsidies are a bad idea. Governments have a role to play in the business of waste management, but it is a regulatory and supervisory one. They should oblige people who create waste to clean up after themselves and ideally ensure that the price of any product reflects the cost of disposing of it safely. That would help to signal which items are hardest to get rid of, giving consumers an incentive to buy goods that create less waste in the first place. That may sound simple enough, but governments seldom get the rules right. In poorer countries they often have no rules at all, or if they have them they fail to enforce them. In rich countries they are often inconsistent: too strict about some sorts of waste and worryingly lax about others. They are also prone to imposing arbitrary targets and taxes. California, for example, wants to recycle all its trash not because it necessarily makes environmental or economic sense but because the goal of “zero waste” sounds politically attractive.

单选题These are hard times for Deutsehe Bank, despite its huge strides in investment banking. Next week its chief executive, Josef Ackerman, goes on trial in Dusseldorf. Careless words by Rolf Breuer, the head of its supervisory board, led to another court ruling last month that may cost Germany' s biggest bank several hundred million euros in damages. Then there is Parmalat. Although no evidence has emerged of complicity in the Italian dairy group' s fraud, Deutsche' s name has become entwined in the affair. In many other respects, however, Deutsche' s reputation has never been higher. In dubbing it " Bank of the Year 2003", International Financing Review, the capital markets' favorite newssheet, purred that Deutsche was a "lean, aggressive, focused universal bank" In the league tables that investment banks watch so keenly, Deutsche excelled last year as lead manager of bonds and convertible bonds and of some racier products, such as repackaged debt securities and high-yield "junk" bonds. In other disciplines it rarely fell below the top ten in the world. However, it is still nowhere near the top in equity offerings and advice on mergers and acquisitions, except in Germany. It still has a problem with costs,which were a fat 82% of income in the third quarter of 2003, thanks mainly to the thick pay packets of its investment bankers and its poor returns from corporate and retail banking. Mr. Ackermann must try to improve the weak spots while spending two clays a week, probably until June, in a courtroom. He and four others face charges of "breach of trust" over the way bonuses were awarded to board meinbers of Mannesmann, a telecoms company. Mr. Aekermann sat on Mannesmann' s supervisory board. There is no suggestion that he gained personally. Nor was there any harmful intent in Mr. Breuer' s remarks in a television interview about the financial health of the Kirch media group shortly before its bankruptcy. But he was careless, and a Munich court found Deutsche (but not Mr. Breuer) liable for damages, to be set in due course, without right of appeal. The bank said this week it has lodged a protest with the federal supreme court in Karlsruhe. Meanwhile, Kirch has filed a suit against Deutsche in America. Deutsche's involvement with Parmalat also looks sloppy. It led a 350m bond issue fur the group in September. It was also a leading borrower and lender of Parma[at shares, so that in November it technically held the voting rights to over 5% of Parmalat stock. That stake had fallen to 1.5% by December 19th, the day the dairy company's black hole became public. It reported this, perhaps over-zealously, to the Italian authorities. That may have given the wrong impression, say, sources close to the bank, because the transactions were for third parties. This is awkward for a bank that managed to avoid most serious attacks on conflicts of interest thai beset the investment-banking industry following the collapse of Enron in 2001 and the bursting of the tech-stock bubble. Mr. Ackermann will need a clear head to steer the bank through the coming storms.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Trying to get Americans to eat a healthy diet is a frustrating business. Even the best-designed public-health campaigns cannot seem to compete with the tempting flavors of the snack-food and fast-food industries and their fat-and sugar-laden products. The results are apparent on a walk down any American street—more than 60% of Americans are overweight, and a full quarter of them are overweight to the point of obesity. Now, health advocates say, an ill-conceived redesign has taken one of the more successful public-health campaigns—the Food Guide Pyramid—and rendered it confusing to the point of uselessness. Some of these critics worry that America's Department of Agriculture caved in to pressure from parts of the food industry anxious to protect their products. The Food Guide Pyramid was a graphic which emphasizes that a healthy diet is built on a base of grains, vegetables and fruits, followed by ever-decreasing amounts of dairy products. meat, sweets and oils. The agriculture department launched the pyramid in 1992 to replace its previous program, which was centered on the idea of four basic food groups. The "Basic Four" campaign showed a plate divided into quarters, and seemed to imply that meat and dairy products should make up half of a healthy diet, with grains, fruits and vegetables making up the other half. It was replaced only over the strenuous objections of the meat and dairy industries. The old pyramid was undoubtedly imperfect. It failed to distinguish between a doughnut and a whole-grain roll, or a hamburger and a skinless chicken breast, and it did not make clear exactly how much of each foodstuff to eat. It did, however, manage to convey the basic idea of proper proportions in an easily understanable way. The new pyramid, called" My Pyramid", abandons the effort to provide this information. Instead, it has been simplified to a mere logo. The food groups are replaced with unlabelled, multi-colored vertical stripes which, in some versions, rise out of a cartoon jumble of foods that look like the aftermath of a riot at a grocery store. Anyone who wants to see how this translates into a healthy diet is invited to go to a website, put in their age, Sex and activity level, and get a Custom. designed pyramid, complete with healthy food choices and suggested portion sizes. This is fine for those who are motivated, but might prove too much effort for those who most need such information. Admittedly, the designers of the new pyramid had a tough job to do. They were supposed to condense the advice in the 84-page United States' Dietary Guidelines into a simple, meaningful graphic suitable for printing on the back of a cereal box. And they had to do this in the face of pressure from dozens of special interest groups—from the country's Potato, Board, which thought potatoes would look nice in the picture, to the Almond Board of California, which felt the same way about almonds. Even the National Watermelon Promotion Board and the California Avocado Commission were eager to sect heir products recognized. Nevertheless, many health advocates believe the new graphic is a missed opportunity. Although officials insist industry pressure had nothing to do with: the eventual design, some critics suspect that political influence was at work: On the other hand, it is not clear how much good even the best graphic could do. Surveys found that 80% of Americans recognized the old Food Guide Pyramid—a big success in the world of public, health campaigns. Yet only 16% followed its advice.

单选题The role of governments in environmental management is deficit but inescapable. Sometimes, the state tries to manage the resources it owns, and does so badly. Often, (1) , governments act in an even more harmful way. They actually subsidize the exploitation and (2) of natural resources. A whole (3) of policies, from farm-price support to protection for coal-mining, do environmental damage and often (4) no economic sense. Making good policies offers a two-fold (5) : a cleaner environmentpolilicians and a more efficient economy. Crowth and environmentalism can actually go hand in hand, if politicians have the courage to (6) the vested interest that subsidies create. No activity affects more of the earth's surface than farming, h shapes a third of the planet's land area, not (7) Antarctica, and the proportion is rising. World food output per head has risen by 4 percent between the 1970s and 1980s mainly as a result of increases in (8) from land already in (9) , but also because more land has been brought under the plough. Higher yields have been achieved by increased irrigation, better crop breeding, and a (10) in the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers in the 1970s and 1980s. All these activities may have (11) environmental impacts. For example, land clearing for agrieuhure is the largest single (12) of deforestation; chemical fertilizers and pesticides may (13) water supplies; more intensive farming and the abandonment of fallow periods (14) worsen soil erosion; and the spread of monochord and use of high-yielding varieties of euros have been accompanied by the (15) of old varieties of food plants which might have provided some (16) against pests or diseases in future. Soil erosion threatens the productivity of land in both rich and poor countries. The United States, (17) the most careful measurements have been done, discovered in 1982 that about one-fifth of its farmland was losing topsoil at a rate (18) to diminish the soil's productivity. The country subsequently (19) a program to convert 11 percent of its cropped land to meadow or forest. Topsoil in India and China is (20) much faster than in America.

单选题Remember the days when companies such as Microsoft and Mc-Kinsey took immense satisfaction from subjecting job candidates to mind-crunching strategy sessions? If you thought that was rough, imagine an interview in which no amount of research or questioning of insiders will help. Imagine instead that all you can do is have a healthy breakfast, pick out your nicest suit, and hope for the best. In the new interview, they"re not just testing what you know. They"re also testing who you are. It"s called the situational interview, and it"s quickly becoming a must in the job-seeking world. In the post-Enron culture of caution, corporations are focusing on an obvious insight: that a gold-plated resume and winning personality are about as accurate in determining job performance as Wall Street analysts are in picking stocks. Now, with shareholder scrutiny, hiring slowdowns, and expense-reducing, no manager can afford to hire the wrong person. Hundreds of companies are switching to the new methods. Whereas the conventional interview has been found to be only 7% accurate in predicting job performance, situational interviews deliver a rating of 54%— the most of any interviewing tool. The situational technique"s superiority stems from its ability to trip up even the wittiest of interviewees. Of course, every applicant must display a healthy dose of occupational know-how, but behavior and ethical backbone play a big role. For example, a prospective analyst at a Wall Street bank might have to face, say, a customer with an account argument. It"s not happening on paper, but in real time—with managers and experts watching nearby. The interviewer plays the role of a fierce customer on the phone, angry about money lost when a trade wasn"t executed on time. It"s set up as an obvious mistake on the banker"s part. Interviewers watch the candidates" reactions: how they process the complex account information, their ability to talk the client down, what their body language displays about their own shortcomings, and which words they choose. In this instance, not being honest about the mistake or showing anger or frustration—no matter how glowing your resume—means you"re out. Behavioral interviews are also being rounded out by other tools that, until recently, had been reserved for elite hires. Personality-testing outfit Caliper, for example, which probes candidates for emotional-intelligence skills and job ability, has seen its business jump 20% this year. Clearly, the new interview isn"t without its drawbacks. Companies run the risk of arousing hostility in candidates, who may feel as if some line has been crossed into personal territory. Moreover, some companies worry about the fairness of personality tests. They have to make sure there are no inherent gender or racial biases in the test.

单选题 Imagine a world where your doctor could help you avoid sickness, using knowledge of your genes as well as how you live your life. Or where he would prescribe drugs he knew would work and not have debilitating side-effects. Such a future is arriving faster than most realise: genetic tests are already widely used to identify patients who will be helped or harmed by certain drugs. And three years ago, in the face of a torrent of new scientific data, a number of new companies set themselves up to interpret this information for customers. Through shop fronts on the internet, anyone could order a testing kit, spit into a tube and send off their DNA—with results downloaded privately at home. Already customers can find out their response to many common medications, such as antivirals and blood-thinning agents. They can also explore their genetic likelihood of developing deep-vein thrombosis, skin cancer or glaucoma. The industry has been subject to conflicting criticisms. {{U}}On the one hand, it stands accused of offering information too dangerous to trust to consumers; on the other it is charged with peddling irrelevant, misleading nonsense.{{/U}} For some rare disorders, such as Huntington's and Tay-Sachs, genetic information is a diagnosis. But most diseases are more complicated and involve several genes, or an environmental component, or both. Someone's chance of getting skin cancer, for example, will depend on whether he worships the sun as well as on his genes. {{U}}America's Government Accountability Office (GAO) report also revealed what the industry has openly admitted for years: that results of disease-prediction tests from different companies sometimes conflict with one another, because there is no industry-wide agreement on standard lifetime risks.{{/U}} Governments hate this sort of anarchy and America's, in particular, is considering regulation. But three things argue against wholesale regulation. First, the level of interference needs to be based on the level of risk a test represents. The government does not need to be involved if someone decides to trace his ancestry or discover what type of earwax he has. {{U}}Second, the laws on fraud should be sufficient to deal with the snake-oil salesmen who promise to predict, say, whether a child might be a sporting champion. And third, science is changing very fast.{{/U}} Fairly soon, a customer's whole genome will be sequenced, not merely the parts thought to be medically relevant that the testing companies now concentrate on, and he will then be able to crank the results through open-source interpretation software downloadable from anywhere on the planet. That will create problems, but the only way to stop that happening would be to make it illegal for someone to have his genome sequenced— and nobody is seriously suggesting that illiberal restriction. Instead, then, of reacting in a hostile fashion to the trend for people to take genetic tests, governments should be asking themselves how they can make best use of this new source of information. Restricting access to tests that inform people about bad reactions to drugs could do harm. The real question is not who controls access, but how to minimise the risks and maximise the rewards of a useful revolution.