2013高考英语 阅读理解四月训练一四.docVIP

2013高考英语阅读理解（4月）训练（14）及答案 C We discuss the issue of when to help a patient die. Doctors of our generation are not newcomers to this question. Going back to my internship（实习）days, I can remember many patients in pain, sometimes in coma(昏迷), with late, hopeless cancer. For many of them, we wrote an order for heavy medication—morphine(吗啡)by the clock. This was not talked about openly and little was written about it. It was essential, not controversial. The best way to bring the problem into focus is to describe two patients whom I cared for. The first, formerly a nurse, had an automobile accident. A few days later her lungs seemed to fill up; her heart developed dangerous rhythm disturbances. So there she was: in coma, on a breathing machine, her heartbeat maintained with an electrical device. One day after rounds, my secretary said the husband and son of the patient wanted to see me. They told me their wife and mother was obviously going to die; she was a nurse and had told her family that she never wanted this kind of terrible death, being maintained by machines. I told them that while I respected their view, there was nothing deadly about her situation. The kidney(肾) failure she had was just the kind for which the artificial kidney was most effective. While possibly a bit reassured, they were disappointed. Here was the head surgeon seemingly determined to keep everybody alive, no matter what. Within a few days the patients pacemaker(起搏器) could be removed and she awoke from her coma. About six months later, the door of my office opened and in walked a gloriously fit woman. After some cheery words of appreciation, the father and son asked to speak to me alone. As soon as the door closed, both men became quite tearful. All that came out was, We want you to know how wrong we were. The second patient was an 85-year-old lady whose hair caught fire while she was smoking. She arrived with a deep burn; I knew it would surely be deadly. As a remarkable coincidence there was a