西安交通大学研究生《高级英语写作》期末考试试题

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)

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Part I: Summary writing (40 points)

Read the following article carefully, and then write a summary in about 200 words.

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 and 1970s. Thalidomide, which came out on the German market late in the 1950s, 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 least 10,000 children 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 the 1970s, 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, some 30,000 cases 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 that 100,000 people every year are killed and more than 2 million are hospitalized as a result of prescription drugs used as prescribed. The British Medical Journal recently reported that 4 out of every 10 patients 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 approximately 1 in every 10 hospital 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