西安交大研究生英语写作试题

20090~2010学年第2学期

西安交通大学研究生《高级英语写作》期末考试试题

(B)

姓名学号英语班号

考场所在院系考试日期

Part I:Summary writing(40points)

Read the following article carefully,and then write a summary in about200words.

The most commonly held perception regarding animal experimentation is that it is necessary for the development of vaccines,cures and treatments for human illness.Proponents ask the important question,what will happen to research on AIDS,heart disease,and cancer if animal experimentation is completely stopped?Will the progress in cures and treatments for these types of illnesses also come to a halt?

There is a growing movement of healthcare professionals including doctors,scientists,and educated members of the public who are opposed to non-human animal-based experimentation on specifically medical and scientific grounds.They argue that animal research is based on a false premise,that results obtained through animal experimentation can be applied to the human body.

Animals not only react differently than humans to different drugs,vaccines,and experiments, they also react differently from one another.Ignoring this difference has been and continues to be very costly to human health.

The most famous example of the dangers of animal testing is the Thalidomide tragedy of the 1960s and1970s.Thalidomide,which came out on the German market late in the1950s,had previously been safely tested on thousands of animals.It was marketed as a wonderful sedative for pregnant or breastfeeding mothers and it supposedly caused no harm to either mother or child. Despite this"safety testing",at least10,000children whose mothers had taken Thalidomide were born throughout the world with severe deformities

Clioquinol is another example of a drug that was safety tested in animals and had a severely negative impact on humans.This drug,manufactured in Japan in the1970s,was marketed as providing safe relief from diarrhea.Not only did Clioquinol not work in humans,it actually caused diarrhea.As a result of Clioquinol being administered to the public,some30,000cases of blindness and/or paralysis and thousands of deaths occurred.

Are these two examples just isolated cases?Even though pharmaceuticals are routinely tested on animals,the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that100,000people every

year are killed and more than2million are hospitalized as a result of prescription drugs used as prescribed.The British Medical Journal recently reported that4out of every10patients who take a prescribed drug can expect to suffer severe or noticeable side effects,while numerous clinical observers agree that the incidence of autogenesis(medically induced disease)is now so great that approximately1in every10hospital beds is occupied by a patient who has been made ill by their doctor.

What about all the important breakthroughs,as a result of animal research,that have aided human health?The animal research industry cites many examples of treatments or cures for illness that have been found using animals.They claim that if animal research is discontinued,it will be at the expense of human health and life.Industry groups,such as Americans for Medical Progress credit animal research with advances such as the development of the polio vaccine,anesthesia,and the discovery of insulin.But a close examination of medical history clearly disputes these claims.

"Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it."

Dr.A.Sabin,1986,developer of the oral polio vaccine Dr.Jonas Salk and Dr.Albert Sabin,are credited with the development of a vaccine to combat poliomyelitis(polio).Yet in the medical industry itself there remains a dispute as to the means by which the development of the polio vaccine occurred and whether or not the vaccine even played a major role in stopping the virus.Dr.John Enders,Dr.Thomas H.Weller,and Dr. Frederick C.Robbins won the Nobel Prize in1954for proving for the first time that it was possible to grow poliovirus in laboratory cultures of non-nervous-system human tissue.This team stopped just short of creating the polio vaccine that would be released to the public.Around the time Enders,Weller,and Robbins won the Nobel Prize,Sabin and Salk began using monkey kidney cells to produce their polio vaccines despite the existence of better alternatives.It was unknown at the time that viruses commonly found in monkey kidney cells are now known to cause cancer in humans.

The claim that the polio vaccine was developed through the use of animal experimentation is misleading.Furthermore,as far as the benefits are concerned,there is ample evidence demonstrating the harmful effects the polio vaccine has had on human health.Deborah Blum,in her1984book,The Monkey Wars,wrote,"In the late1980s,scientists tracking the life histories of 59,000pregnant women all vaccinated with Salk polio vaccine found that their offspring had a thirteen times higher rate of brain tumors than those who did not receive the vaccine."(pg.229) Many historians believe that the decline in cases in polio,like many epidemics of the past,must be attributed to factors such as improved hygiene and not solely vaccination.

Surgical anesthesia was discovered in the mid nineteenth century when Crawford Williamson