The Supreme Court’’ s decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering. Although it ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Court in effect supported the medical principle of "double effect," a centuries-old moral principle holding that an action having two effects―a good one that is intended and a harmful one that is foreseen―is permissible if the actor intends only the good effect. Doctors have used that principle in recent years to justify using high doses of morphine to control terminally iii patients’’ pain, even though increasing dosages will eventually kill the patient. Nancy Dubler, director of Montefiore Medical Center, contends that the principle will shield doctors who" until now have very, very strongly insisted that they could not give patients sufficient medication to control their pain if that might hasten death." George Annas, chair of the health law department at Boston University, maintains that, as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to hasten death. "It’’s like surgery," he says." We don’’t call those deaths homicides because the doctors didn’’t intend to kill their patients, although they risked their death. If you’’re a physician, you can risk your patients’’ suicide as long as you don’’t intend their suicide." On another level, many in the medical community acknowledge that the assisted-suicide debate has been fueled in part by the despair of patients for whom modern medicine has prolonged the physical agony of dying. Just three weeks before the Court’’s ruling on physician-assisted suicide, the National Academy of Science (NAS) released a two-volume report, Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life. It identifies the undertreatment of pain and the aggressive use of" ineffectual and forced medical procedures that may prolong and even dishonor the period of dying" as the twin problems of end-of-life care. The profession is taking steps to require young doctors to train in hospices, to test knowledge of aggressive pain management therapies, to develop a Medicare billing code for hospital-based care, and to develop new standards for assessing and treating pain at the end of life. Annas says lawyers can play a key role in insisting that these well-meaning medical initiatives translate into better care." Large numbers of physicians seem unconcerned with the pain their patients are needlessly and predictably suffering," to the extent that it constitutes" systematic patient abuse." He says medical licensing boards" must make it clear.., that painful deaths are presumptively ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license suspension." According to the NAS’’ s report, one of the problems in end-of-tire care is

A:prolonged medical procedures. B:inadequate treatment of pain. C:systematic drug abuse. D:insufficient hospital care

No one can be a great thinker who does not realize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to form great thinkers that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as much or even more indispensable to enable average human beings to attain the mental quality which they are capable of. There have been, and may again be, great individual thinkers in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But there never has been, nor ever will be, in that atmosphere an intellectually active people. While any people has made a temporary approach to such a character, it has been because the dread of heterodox(非正统的) thinking was for a time suspended. Where there is an unspoken convention that principles are not to be disputed; where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable. Never when prolonged arguments avoided the subjects which are large and important enough to rouse enthusiasm was the mind of a people stirred up from its foundations and the impulse given which raised even persons of the most ordinary intellect to something of thinking beings. 　　He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, and if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels the most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of opponents from his own teachers ,presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their seemingly reasonable and persuasive form: he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; otherwise he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition, and even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know. They have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them and considered what such persons may have to say. The author is of the opinion that in a great period we may expect to find

A:acceptance of ultimate truths. B:enthusiasm for prolonged arguments. C:debates about heterodox thinking. D:arguments over important principles.

The discussion was so prolonged and exhausting that ___________the speakers stopped for refreshments.

A:at large B:at intervals C:at ease D:at random

The (ruling) party could even lose (its) majority in the lower house of parliament, (started) a period of (prolonged struggling.)

A:ruling B:its C:started D:prolonged struggling

The ruling party could even lose its majority in the lower house of parliament, started a period of prolonged struggling. A. ruling B. its C. started D. prolonged struggling

C，改为starting。

A small percentage of the grain ______ ruined by the prolonged rain.

A:was B:were C:is D:are

As the headmaster made a long speech, the ceremony was prolonged by ten minutes.
　　

A:quickened B:enlarged C:enriched D:lengthened

Operating a propulsion diesel engine at less than 30% of designed normal load for prolonged periods will result in ______.

A:decreased fuel consumption per brake horsepower B:more complete cylinder scavenging C:extended valve life D:carbon formation on combustion chamber surfaces

A vessel sounding a fog signal of one short ，one prolonged，and one short blast is indicating that the vessel is ______．

A:fishing B:in ditess C:at anchor D:not under command"