3.
阅读理解
What is the worst disease(疾病) in the world? Many people might
say it is cancer (癌症). Cancer will kill about 9.6
million people in the world this year, according to the World Health
Organization. Scientists have been working to find ways to beat cancer. A lot
of progress has been made in this field.
James P. Allison from the US and Japanese
researcher Tasuku Honjo discovered a new kind of cancer treatment that earned
them the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in October. The new
treatment can make our immune systems (免疫系统) strong enough to effectively fight cancer cells.
It is hoped that this treatment can be used to treat most cancers in the
future.
This is not the only recent improvement in
cancer treatment. In November, the US Food and Drug
Administration approved(批准) a new cancer drug(药物) called Vitrakvi. Instead of being effective only for treating one
kind of cancer, this drug can be used to treat 17 different kinds of cancer,
including lung cancer and breast cancer, USA Today reported.
Finding cancer as early as
possible is the best way to beat it. To check people for cancer, doctors must
collect tissue from a
patient's tumor (肿瘤) and test it. This process can take a long time. But in December,
scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia developed a simple
cancer test that can detect (检测) cancer in a patient's
blood. The test takes less than 10 minutes. The test is about 90 percent accurate,
the Guardian reported.
With all of
these treatments, cancer can be effectively controlled. Honjo believes most
kinds of cancer will be-come treatable by 2050."Even if we cannot
completely eliminate (消除) the tumor, we can survive while still having part of a tumor,"
Honjo said at a press conference (新闻发布会)in Stockholm,
Sweden, in December.