問題詳情


(C)The fantasies inspired by TB in the last century, by cancer now, are responses to a diseasethought to be intractable and capricious—that is, a disease not understood—in an era in whichmedicine’s central premise is that all diseases can be cured. Such a disease is, by definition,mysterious. For as long as its cause was not understood and the ministrations of doctors remained soineffective, TB was thought to be an insidious, implacable theft of a life. Now it is cancer’s turn to bethe disease that doesn’t knock before it enters, cancer fills the role of an illness experienced as aruthless secret invasion—a role it will keep until, one day, its etiology becomes as clear and itstreatment as effective as those of TB have become.Although the way in which disease mystifies is set against a backdrop of new expectations, thedisease itself (once TB, cancer today) arouses thoroughly old-fashioned kinds of dread. Any diseasethat is treated as a mystery and acutely enough feared will be felt to be morally, if not literally,contagious. Thus, a surprisingly large number of people with cancer find themselves being shunnedby relatives and friends and are the object of practices of decontamination by members of theirhousehold, as if cancer, like TB, were an infectious disease.Cancer patients are lied to, not just because the disease is (or is thought to be) a death sentence,but because it is felt to be obscene—in the original meaning of that word: ill-omened, abominable,repugnant to the senses. Cardiac disease implies a weakness, trouble, failure that is mechanical; thereis no disgrace, nothing of the taboo that once surrounded peoples afflicted with TB and stillsurrounds those who have cancer. The metaphors attached to TB and to cancer imply living processesof a particularly resonant and horrid kind.
37. Why does the author compares cancer with TB?
(A) Because physicians had a great discovery about their formation.
(B) Because both were considered incurable.
(C) Because both are contagious.
(D) Because both are infectious.

參考答案

答案：B
難度：非常簡單1
統計：A(0),B(2),C(0),D(0),E(0)

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