2018考博英语阅读经济学人文章每日精析:预防各类流行病

2017-08-22 11:47:56来源:网络

2018考博英语阅读经济学人文章每日精析:预防各类流行病

  考博英语阅读大部分博士研究生招生院校都使用《经济学人》杂志文章作为题源,新东方在线考博频道为考博生们将其中的文章进行深度分析,希望能提高大家的考博英语阅读水平,读懂长难句。

  Vaccines: Putting shots in the locker疫苗:有备无患How to anticipate epidemics怎样预防各类流行病FOREWARNED, the proverb has it, is forearmed. But what happens when there is no warning? That was the case in December 2013, when an outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever began in Guinea. It spread rapidly to Liberia and Sierra Leone and raged on for over a year. Around 29,000 people were infected. More than 11,000 of them died.谚语里有句话叫做“凡事预则立”,事先得到警告就等于有了准备。但是如果事先没有警告,会怎么样呢?在2013年12月,几内亚突然爆发了埃博拉出血热疾病。它迅速蔓延到利比里亚和塞拉利昂并持续肆虐了一年多,致使约29000人感染,11000多人死亡。

  Forearmed 凡事预则立;有备无患

  The world responded to this crisis, shipping in doctors, nurses and medical equipment. But what it could not ship in, for none existed, was the thing that would most quickly have stopped the epidemic: a vaccine. Such a vaccine was created eventually, but by the time it was ready, the outbreak was all but over. Had it been available from the beginning, things could have been different.世界各地为了应对这场危机,纷纷向几内亚运入医护人员和医疗装备。但是能以最快速度阻止疾病蔓延的疫苗却不能运去,因为这种疫苗当时并不存在。等到疫苗最终被研制成功时,病毒已经基本结束了。如果从一开始就有这种疫苗,事情就不会这样了。

  Next time, though, they might be, for on August 31st a new organisation came into being. CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, was founded this week in London, at the headquarters of the Wellcome Trust, a medical charity. It is the joint brainchild of the Wellcome, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and the government of Norway, and its purpose is precisely to forearm the world against future outbreaks of disease, without foreknowledge of what those outbreaks will be.但是这个愿望下一次可能会实现,8月31日一个新兴组织应运而生了。CEPI-----流行病防范创新联盟本周在伦敦威康信托基金会(一个慈善医疗机构)总部成立了。这是威廉信托、比尔和梅林达·盖茨基金会、世界经济论坛和挪威政府联手合作的结晶。它的成立,旨在全世界范围内,在不知道下一个疫情是什么的情况下,就未来可能爆发的疾病做好精确的预防措施。

  Brainchild 脑力劳动的产物,设想,智慧结晶

  Paradoxically, part of the inspiration for CEPI’s creation was not the failure to deliver an Ebola vaccine in time for it to be useful, but how close that project came to success. Creating a new vaccine from scratch is a long-winded undertaking, but in the case of Ebola several candidate vaccines were already on the shelf thanks to earlier, but stalled, work by America’s army and that country’s National Institutes of Health. There were also three pharma companies, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and Merck, willing, pro bono publico, to take these candidates and try to turn them into the real thing as quickly as possible. That they succeeded in doing so by the summer of 2015 was, by most standards, extraordinary—and means vaccines are available the next time Ebola rears its ugly head. If a spontaneous lash-up could achieve such an outcome, the thinking went, an organised approach should do even better.但是和此组织的创建目的看起来有点相互矛盾的是:创办CEPI的部分灵感并非来自于未能及时地将疫苗研制出来,而是此次疫苗的研制就差那么一点就完美成功了。从头开始研究一项新疫苗是一个漫长的任务,但是在埃博拉病毒的案例中,早前就有几种候选疫苗已经研制出来了,但是由于美国的军队和国家的国立卫生研究院插手而停滞不前。出于公益性目的,还有三家制药公司GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and Merck想尽快把这几种疫苗研制出来。他们在2015年的夏季全方位出色地完成了。这意味着下次可恶的埃博拉病毒再露出苗头的时候出现时候就可以派上用场了。如果一个自发的应急预案能行得通的话,那么照这么想一个建立一个组织的办法应该会更好。

  from scratch 白手起家;从头做起

  long-winded adj. 冗长的;罗嗦的

  pharma n. 制药公司pro bono publico 公益性lash-up n. 计划;adj. 应急的 You can bank on it这个机构很可靠

  CEPI’s plan is to build up a bank of candidate vaccines for as many as possible of the viral diseases that lurk menacingly on the edges of human society, but in which there is insufficient commercial interest for pharmaceutical firms to do the development work. These include Lassa fever, Marburg fever, MERS, SARS, Nipah and Rift Valley fever, but not dengue or influenza. Those two are already well served by drug-company researchers—as is Zika virus, for which a vaccine may be ready for testing in the field next year.CEPI的计划是建造一个尽量囊括所有病毒的疫苗库。这些病毒对人类社存在潜在威胁而由于商业利益小医药公司不愿出钱研究。这些病毒包括拉萨热病毒、马尔堡出血病毒、中东呼吸综合征、严重急性呼吸综合征、尼波病毒和裂谷热病毒,但是并不包括登革热和流感,因为医药公司已经对这两种病毒做了详尽的研究。Zika病毒也是,可能明年它的疫苗就可以进行测试了。

  The aim, says Jeremy Farrar, the Wellcome Trust’s director, is not to guess exactly which illness will become epidemic next, as this is a difficult thing to do. Instead CEPI will work through the list in a systematic way. To start with, it will pay for work on up to three viruses.威康信托基金会的负责人Jeremy Farrar说,他们的目的不是准确的预测下一个病毒是什么,因为这是很难做到的。相反CEPI将会系统地研究名单上的病毒,起初会出钱研究三种病毒。

  Scientifically, this means identifying several possible vaccines for each disease, putting these through animal trials, and then carrying out small safety trials on human beings. Those candidates deemed safe will be stored for a future outbreak. This approach maximises the saving of time while minimising cost. If a disease for which there are candidate vaccines does become threatening, larger and more expensive human-efficacy trials can be organised quickly in response. If not, no money is wasted doing so.科学地说来需要经过以下步骤一一选出每种病毒的若干候选疫苗,通过动物试验,并在人类身上进行小型安全试验。那些被认为是安全的候选疫苗将被存储起来以应对未来的疾病爆发。这种方法能最大限度的节省时间,降低了成本。一旦某种已有候选疫苗的病毒对人类构成了威胁,再快速地组织规模更大费用更高人类药效测试。如没有构成威胁,就不用浪费钱去做了。

  Organising efficacy trials quickly, though, illuminates CEPI’s other job. This is to have the bureaucracy for such trials (planning how they might be carried out, and arranging ethical approval) sorted out in advance, along with the means to scale up the production of successful candidates. Indeed, CEPI may even invest in its own surge capacity for the manufacturing of vaccines, rather than forcing drug companies to divert resources from existing vaccine production (with potential consequences for public health).迅速组织药效试验,有助于CEPI其他工作的开展。促使政府提前做好会此类试验 (做好计划,获取伦理委员会批准),同时还可以想办法完成合格候选疫苗的大规模生产。事实上,CEPI甚至可以提高自身制造疫苗的最高负荷能力而非一定要迫使制药公司从现有的疫苗生产中转移资源(会对公共卫生事业造成一定影响)。

  There are thorny issues here, not least the question of legal risks. Even with the preliminary research already done, speed will be of the essence when the world is faced with an epidemic. Human trials will have to be conducted more hastily than drug companies are used to doing. That might lead to mistakes and thus to law suits. Who should bear the brunt of consequent liabilities needs to be sorted out in advance. This might involve governments offering some sort of reinsurance cover or waiver from such liability.在这方面有很多棘手的问题,尤其是法律风险的问题。即使初步的研究已经完成,速度将是全球对抗流行病的关键。人体试验必须比以往药物公司做的更迅速。(读者试译)

  Brunt 首当其冲

  John-Arne Rottingen, CEPI’s interim boss, argues that paying to prepare for future epidemics is like buying a form of global health insurance. But, unlike other forms of health insurance, the premium need not be paid for ever. No doubt the list of targets will grow as time goes by. But it is not infinite. Should the world wish to address the top 20 threats over the course of the next decade Dr Farrar estimates the total cost would be $1 billion-2 billion.CEPI临时负责人John-Arne Rottingen认为,为未来应对流行病做准备的投资就像购买全球医疗保险。但是, 与其他形式医疗保险的不同的是,这类保险费永远不需要支付。毫无疑问的是,随着时间的流逝,单子会越来越长。但它还是有限的。据Farrar博士估计,如果人类打算在接下来的十年里解决掉前20种疾病的威胁的话,可能要花费10-20亿美元。

  The next stage is to start raising that money. The organisation hopes to tap governments and charities, including those which helped found it. It will also involve, and thus pick the brains of, drug companies and the World Health Organisation. If things go well, CEPI will be up and running next year. Once that has happened, the threat from epidemic viruses will diminish year by year thereafter.

  下一阶段是开始筹集资金。该组织希望利用包括那些帮助建立该组织的政府和慈善机构来筹钱。这还会涉及到制药巨头和世界卫生组织,CEPI还要把它们为自己所用才行。如果一切顺利, CEPI明年建成并且开始运转。一旦成功, 流行病的威胁就将会逐年减少。

  Tap vt, 采用,利用

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