1、編大學英語第三版Book 4 Uni t 6Af t er Cl ass r eadi ng 中 英 對 照精品資料Health Risks健康威脅僅供學習與交流，如有侵權請聯系網站刪除 謝謝31 Opinion polls repeatedly tell us that the only thing Americans worry about more than the environment is their health. This is entirely understandable, for health is obviously preferable to illness. Wha

2、t makes today's preoccupation with health slightly surprising is that Americans are far healthier now than they have ever been. Many diseases that once struck terror into hearts have either been completely eliminated or brought under control. Although AIDS is a notable exception, few new mass ki

3、llers have come along to replace the ones that have been eliminated.2 Nonetheless, health and the various threats to it remain everyone's permanent concern. After all, more than half of us (57 percent) will die from either heart disease or cancer, if current trends continue.3 One major problem w

4、ith any comparison of health risksespecially lifethreatening ones is that they differ enormously in their immediacy. For instance, AIDS if you get it will probably be fatal after a number of years. Cancer induced by smoking or exposure to radiation, on the other hand, may take 20 to 30 years before

5、its catastrophic effects show up . In making choices about health risks, therefore, it is important to bear in mind the likely time lag between taking a risk and suffering its consequences.4 Those with a mind to "live for today" are apt to be indifferent to health risks that have a very lo

6、ng incubation period. Although this is short-sighted, it does make sense to discount long-term risks more than short-term ones. After all, when virtually any of us is confronted with the choice of doing something likely to kill us today versus doing something likely to kill us in two decades, the ch

7、oice is going to be the lesser of the two evils .5 One commonly used measure to deal with such problems is a concept called years民意調查一再告訴我們，美國人最為擔心 的就是他們的健康，其次才是環境問題。 這是完全可以理解的，因為身體健康顯然 比生病要好。美國人現在對健康如此關 注，是有點令人吃驚，因為他們目前比以 往任何時候都要健康得多。許多曾令人恐 懼的疾病現在或者已經徹底根除，或者已 得到控制。盡管艾滋病是個顯著的例外， 但是現在幾乎沒有什么新的能置許多人于 死

8、地的疾病出現，以取代那些已被根除的 疾病。然而，健康以及對健康的各種威脅，仍然 是人們永久關注的問題。畢竟，如果目前 的趨勢無法制止的話，我們中將有不止一 半（57%）的人將死于心臟病或是癌癥。將威脅健康的危險，特別是致命的危險， 進行比較時，有一個主要的問題，就是這 些危險的緊迫性有很大差異。例如艾滋 病，如果你染上的話，很可能幾年后就死 亡。然而，由吸煙或輻射誘發的癌癥，也 許要經過20至30年的時間其災難性的 后果才會出現。因此，在對健康的各種危 險做出選擇時，務必要考慮進行冒險與承 受其后果之間的時間間隔。那些一心要 今朝有酒今朝醉”的人們，往 往對潛伏期較長的危害不放在心上。盡管 這

9、是一種目光短淺的行為，但不理會滯后 期長的危險，重視近期危險還是有道理 的。畢竟，如果我們真的面臨選擇，是去 做今天就可能使我們喪命的事，還是去做 20年后才可能使我們喪命的事，我們往 往會兩害相比取其輕。對待這類問題有種常用的計算方法，就是 考慮可能少活的年數（YPLL）。其意思 of potential life lost (YPLL). The idea is that for a 25-year-old, doing something that will kill him in 5 years is much more "costly" than doing so

10、mething that will kill him in 40 years. Both may involve the same element of risk the same probability of eventually dying from that activity but a risk that may cause immediate damage is much more costly than one for which the piper needn't be paid for a long time . In the first case, he will h

11、ave his normal life span cut short by about 45 years; in the latter case, the deficit is about 5 years . Thinking about matters in this light inevitably causes a reassessment of many of the threats to health. For instance, heart disease is the single largest killer of Americans, way in front of canc

12、er or strokes. However, heart disease tends to strike the elderly in much greater proportions than younger people. Cancer, by contrast, kills fewer people but tends to strike somewhat earlier than heart disease. Hence, more YPLLs are lost to cancer than to heart disease despite the greater incidence

13、 of fatal heart cases. Specifically, cancers claim about 25 percent more YPLLs than heart disease (if we define the YPLL as a year of life lost before age 65).6 The concept of YPLLs has an important, if controversial, influence on issues in health care economics. It is frequently argued that money d

14、evoted to medical research on curing diseases should be divided upon the basis of the number of lives lost to each disease. Thus, some critics of the massive levels of funding devoted to AIDS research claim that compared to killers such as heart disease and cancer AIDS receives a disproportionately

15、high support. That criticism fails to consider the fact that AIDS, by virtue of striking people principally in their 20s and 30s, generates far more YPLLs than the bare figure of 20,000 deaths per year, bad as that is, might suggest. Put differently, finding a cure for AIDS would be likely to add ab

16、out 25-30 years to the life of each potential victim. Finding a cure for heart disease, although it might save far more lives, would probably add only another 5-10 years to the life of its average victim.是，對一個25歲的人來說，去做一件使 自己五年后喪生的事要比做一件40年后喪生的事代價高昂”得多。二者同樣都具 有危險因素即最終因從事某事而導致 死亡的可能性相同但是，會馬上引起 傷害的危險，

17、要比一個很長時間不需付出 代價的危險要昂貴得多。在第一種情形 下，他的正常壽命減少了約 45年，而在 第二種情形下，減少了約 5年。從這種角 度看問題必然會對威脅健康的許多因素進 行重新評估。例如，心臟病是奪去美國人 性命的頭號殺手，遠遠超過癌癥或中風。 然而，老年人患心臟病的比例大大超出了 年輕人。相比之下，癌癥的死亡人數雖然 要少于心臟病的死亡人數，但患癌癥的人 群比較年輕。所以，盡管心臟病死亡率要 大，但癌癥損失的YPLL要比心臟病多。 具體來講，與心臟病相比，癌癥讓人大約 多損失了 25 %的YPLL （如果我們將 YPLL定義為65歲以前壽命縮短的年 頭）。YPLL這一概念，盡管人們

18、對它還有爭 議，卻對保健經濟學有著重要影響。人們 經常爭辯說，用于醫學研究攻克疾病的資 金應該按每種疾病死亡人數的多少來分 配。因此，一些人士抨擊將大量資金用于 艾滋病研究。他們認為與其他致命的疾病 如心臟病和癌癥相比，艾滋病得到了不成 比例的高額資助。該批評沒有考慮到這樣 一個事實：由于艾滋病的主要受害者為二 三十歲的年輕人，盡管每年只造成 20,000 人死亡一一該數字本身也不小了 但是艾滋病引起的 YPLL要大得多， 遠比簡單的死亡人數更值得我們重視。換 句話說，找到治療艾滋病的方法，將可能 增加每位潛在的艾滋病患者 25至30年 的壽命。找到治療心臟病的方法，雖然可 能拯救更多人的生命，但對每位受害者來 說只能增加平均5到10年的壽命。7 The assessment of the seriousness of a risk changes, depending upon whether we ask how many lives it claims or how many YPLLs it involves. Some of the differences are quite striking. For instance, accidental deaths appear relatively insignificant co