学位英语

Prolonging Human Litre

Prolonging human life has increased the size of the human population. Many people alive todaywould have died of childhood diseases if they had been bdrn 100 years ago. Because more people livelonger, there are more people around at any given time. In fact, it is a decrease in death rates, not anincrease in birthrates, that has led to the population explosion.

Prolonging human life has also increased the dependency (依赖) load. In all societies, people whoare disabled or too young or too old to work are dependent on the rest of society to provide for them.In hunting and gathering cultures, old people who could not keep up might be left behind to die. Intimes of famine (饥荒), infants might be allowed to die because they could not survive if their parentsstarved (使挨饿), whereas if the parents survived they could have another child. In most contempora-ry societies, people feel a moral obligation to keep people alive whether they can work or not. We havea great many people today who live past the age at which they want to work or are able to work; wealso have rules which require people to retire at a certain age. Unless these people were able to savemoney for their retirement, somebody else must support them. In the United States, many retired peo-ple live on social security checks which are so little that they must live in near poverty. Older peoplehave more illness than young or middle-aged (中年) people; unless they have wealth or private or gov-ernment insurance, they must often "go on welfare (福利 )" if they have a serious illness.

When older people become senile or too weak and ill to care for themselves, they create graveproblems for their families. In the past and in some traditional cultures, they would be cared for athome until they died. Today, with most members of a household working or in school, there is oftenno one at home who can care for a sick or weak person. To meet this need, a great many nursing homesand convalescent hospitals have been built. These are often profit-making organizations, althoughsome are sponsored by religious and other nonprofit groups. While a few of these institutions are good,most of them are simply "dumping grounds" for the dying in which "care" is given by poorly paid, o-verworked, and under skilled personnel.

36. The writer believes that the population explosion results from __________

A. an increase in birthrates

B. the industrial development

C. a decrease in death rates

D. cultural advances

37. It can be inferred from the passage that in hunting and gathering cultures

A. it was a moral responsibility to keep old-aged people alive

B. infants could be left dead in times of starvation

C. parents had to impart the cultural wisdom of the tribe to their children

D. death was considered to be freedom from hardships

38. According to the passage, which of the following statements about retired people in the United States is true?

A. Many of them have a very hard life.

B. They cannot live a decent life without enough bank savings.

C. They rely mainly on their children for financial support.

D. Most of them live with their children and therefore are well looked after.

39. In Paragraph 3, the phrase "this need" refers to __________

A. the need to prolong the lives of old people.

B. the need to enrich the life of the retired people

C. the need to build profit-making nursing homes

D. the need to take care of sick and weak people

40. Which of the following best describes the writer's attitude toward most of the nursing homes, and convalescent hospitals?

A. Sympathetic.

B. Unfriendly.

C. Optimistic.

D. Critical.

答案：36.C 37.B 38.A 39.D 40.D

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