Every newborn baby is dealt a hand of cards which helps to determine how long he or she will be allowed to play the game of life. Good cards will help those who have them to have a long and healthy existence, while bad cards will bring to those who have them terrible diseases like high blood pressure and heart disease. Occasionally, cards are dealt out that doom their holders to an early death. In the past, people never knew exactly which cards they had been dealt. They could guess at the future only by looking at the kind of health problems experienced by their parents or grandparents.
Genetic testing, which makes it possible to find dangerous genes, has changed all this. But, until recently, if you were tested positive for a bad gene you were not obliged to reveal this to anyone else except in a few extreme circumstances. This month, however, Britain became the first country in the world to allow life insurers to ask for test results.
So far, approval has been given only for a test for a fatal brain disorder known as Huntington’s disease. But ten other tests (for seven diseases) are already in use and are awaiting similar approval.
The independent body that gives approval, the Department of Health’s genetics and insurance committee, does not have to decide whether the use of genetic information in insurance is ethical. It must judge only whether the tests are reliable to insurers. In the case of Huntington’s disease the answer is clear-cut. People unlucky enough to have this gene will die early, and cost life insurers dearly.
This is only the start. Clear-cut genetic answers, where a gene is simply and directly related to a person’s risk of death, are uncommon. More usually, a group of genes is associated with the risk of developing a common disease, dependent on the presence of other genetic or environmental factors. But, as tests improve, it will become possible to predict whether or not a particular individual is at risk. In the next few years researchers will discover more and more about the functions of individual genes and what health risks — or benefits — are associated with them.
Which of the following statements is true according to the text

A:Genes may contribute to some common diseases. B:Environmental factors cause more diseases than genes. C:It is common that most fatal diseases are caused by genes. D:It is impossible to get clear-cut genetic answers.

Text 1

A:Genes may contribute to some common diseases. B:Environmental factors cause more diseases than genes. C:It is common that most fatal diseases are caused by genes. D:It is impossible to get clear-cut genetic answers.

Americans Decrease Increasingly, historians are blaming diseases imported from the Old World for the staggering disparity(不同) between the indigenous (本土的) population of America in 1492—new estimates of which soar as high as 100 million, or approximately one-sixth of the human race at that time—and the few million full-blooded Native Americans alive at the end of the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that chronic disease was an important factor in the precipitous(险峻的) decline, and it is highly probable that the greatest killer was epidemic disease, especially as manifested in virgin-soil (处女地) epidemics. Virgin-soil epidemics are those in which the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologically(免疫学的) almost defenseless. That virgin-soil epidemics were important in American history is strongly indicated by evidence that a number of dangerous maladies(病)—small pox, measles(麻疹) ,malaria(疟病), yellow fever, and undoubtedly several more— were unknown in the pre-Columbian New World. The effects of their sudden introduction are demonstrated in the early chronicles of America, which contain reports of horrendous (可怕的) epidemics and steep population declines, confirmed in many cases by recent equantitative analyses of Spanish tribute records and other sources. The evidence provided by the documents of British and French colonies is not as definitive because the conquerors of those areas did not establish permanent settlements and begin to keep continuous records until the seventieth century, by which time the worst epidemics had probably already taken place. Furthermore , the British tended to drive the native populations away, rather than enslaving them as the Spaniards did, so that the epidemics of British America occurred beyond the range of colonists direct observation. Even so, the surviving records of North America do contain references to deadly epidemics among the indigenous population. In 1616—1619 an epidemic, possibly of bubonic or pneumonic (肺的) plague (瘟疫), swept coastal New England, killing as many as nine out of ten. During the 1630’’s small-pox, the disease most fatal to the Native American people, eliminated half the population of the Huron and Iroquois confederations. In the 1820’’s fever devastated the people of the Coulumbia River area, killing eight out of ten of them. Unfortunately, the documentation of these and other epidemics is slight and frequently unreliable, and it is necessary to supplement what little we do know with evidence from recent epidemics among Native Americans. For example, in 1952 an outbreak of measles among the Native American inhabitants of Ungava Bay. Quebec, affected 99 percent of the population and killed 7 percent, even though some had the benefit of modern medicine. Cases such as this demonstrate that even diseases that are not normally fatal can have devastating consequences when they strike an immunologically defenseless community. The author implies which of the following statements about measles?

A:It is not usually a fatal disease. B:It ceased to be a problem by the seventieth century. C:It is the disease most commonly involved in virgin-soil epidemics. D:It was not a significant problem in Spanish colonies.

ADS is a fatal disease.

A:dead B:deadly C:dying D:died

ADS is a fatal disease.

A:dead B:deadly C:dying D:died

Americans Decrease Increasingly, historians are blaming diseases imported from the Old World for the staggering disparity(不同) between the indigenous (本土的) population of America in 1492—new estimates of which soar as high as 100 million, or approximately one-sixth of the human race at that time—and the few million full-blooded Native Americans alive at the end of the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that chronic disease was an important factor in the precipitous(险峻的) decline, and it is highly probable that the greatest killer was epidemic disease, especially as manifested in virgin-soil (处女地) epidemics. Virgin-soil epidemics are those in which the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologically(免疫学的) almost defenseless. That virgin-soil epidemics were important in American history is strongly indicated by evidence that a number of dangerous maladies(病)—small pox, measles(麻疹) ,malaria(疟病), yellow fever, and undoubtedly several more— were unknown in the pre-Columbian New World. The effects of their sudden introduction are demonstrated in the early chronicles of America, which contain reports of horrendous (可怕的) epidemics and steep population declines, confirmed in many cases by recent equantitative analyses of Spanish tribute records and other sources. The evidence provided by the documents of British and French colonies is not as definitive because the conquerors of those areas did not establish permanent settlements and begin to keep continuous records until the seventieth century, by which time the worst epidemics had probably already taken place. Furthermore , the British tended to drive the native populations away, rather than enslaving them as the Spaniards did, so that the epidemics of British America occurred beyond the range of colonists direct observation. Even so, the surviving records of North America do contain references to deadly epidemics among the indigenous population. In 1616—1619 an epidemic, possibly of bubonic or pneumonic (肺的) plague (瘟疫), swept coastal New England, killing as many as nine out of ten. During the 1630’’s small-pox, the disease most fatal to the Native American people, eliminated half the population of the Huron and Iroquois confederations. In the 1820’’s fever devastated the people of the Coulumbia River area, killing eight out of ten of them. Unfortunately, the documentation of these and other epidemics is slight and frequently unreliable, and it is necessary to supplement what little we do know with evidence from recent epidemics among Native Americans. For example, in 1952 an outbreak of measles among the Native American inhabitants of Ungava Bay. Quebec, affected 99 percent of the population and killed 7 percent, even though some had the benefit of modern medicine. Cases such as this demonstrate that even diseases that are not normally fatal can have devastating consequences when they strike an immunologically defenseless community. The author implies which of the following statements about measles?

A:It is not usually a fatal disease. B:It ceased to be a problem by the seventieth century. C:It is the disease most commonly involved in virgin-soil epidemics. D:It was not a significant problem in Spanish colonies.

Americans Decrease Increasingly, historians are blaming diseases imported from the Old World for the staggering disparity(不同) between the indigenous (本土的) population of America in 1492—new estimates of which soar as high as 100 million, or approximately one-sixth of the human race at that time—and the few million full-blooded Native Americans alive at the end of the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that chronic disease was an important factor in the precipitous(险峻的) decline, and it is highly probable that the greatest killer was epidemic disease, especially as manifested in virgin-soil (处女地) epidemics. Virgin-soil epidemics are those in which the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologically(免疫学的) almost defenseless. That virgin-soil epidemics were important in American history is strongly indicated by evidence that a number of dangerous maladies(病)—small pox, measles(麻疹) ,malaria(疟病), yellow fever, and undoubtedly several more— were unknown in the pre-Columbian New World. The effects of their sudden introduction are demonstrated in the early chronicles of America, which contain reports of horrendous (可怕的) epidemics and steep population declines, confirmed in many cases by recent equantitative analyses of Spanish tribute records and other sources. The evidence provided by the documents of British and French colonies is not as definitive because the conquerors of those areas did not establish permanent settlements and begin to keep continuous records until the seventieth century, by which time the worst epidemics had probably already taken place. Furthermore , the British tended to drive the native populations away, rather than enslaving them as the Spaniards did, so that the epidemics of British America occurred beyond the range of colonists direct observation. Even so, the surviving records of North America do contain references to deadly epidemics among the indigenous population. In 1616—1619 an epidemic, possibly of bubonic or pneumonic (肺的) plague (瘟疫), swept coastal New England, killing as many as nine out of ten. During the 1630’’s small-pox, the disease most fatal to the Native American people, eliminated half the population of the Huron and Iroquois confederations. In the 1820’’s fever devastated the people of the Coulumbia River area, killing eight out of ten of them. Unfortunately, the documentation of these and other epidemics is slight and frequently unreliable, and it is necessary to supplement what little we do know with evidence from recent epidemics among Native Americans. For example, in 1952 an outbreak of measles among the Native American inhabitants of Ungava Bay. Quebec, affected 99 percent of the population and killed 7 percent, even though some had the benefit of modern medicine. Cases such as this demonstrate that even diseases that are not normally fatal can have devastating consequences when they strike an immunologically defenseless community. The author implies which of the following statements about measles?

A:It is not usually a fatal disease. B:It ceased to be a problem by the seventieth century. C:It is the disease most commonly involved in virgin-soil epidemics. D:It was not a significant problem in Spanish colonies.