“3·15”在美国.docVIP

“3·15”在美国 Today people around the globe are celebrating World Consumers Rights Day. It was on 15 March 1962 that US President John F. Kennedy gave a speech in which he proposed a Consumer Bill of Rights that would include the right to product safety. In spite of President Kennedys effort to draw attention to this issue, however, the modern consumer rights movement did not really get underway until a young American lawyer named Ralph Nader made it frontnews. 今天，全世界人民都在庆祝消费者权益日。1962年的3月15日，美国总统肯尼迪发表讲话，倡导一项包括消费者有要求产品安全可靠的权利在内的《消费者权利法案》。然而，尽管肯尼迪总统对此做出努力以引起公众注意，但直到美国青年律师拉尔夫·内德使此问题成为社会关注热点，当代消费者权益运动才真正开始了。 There had been many significant consumer crusades before Nader. The popular outrage generated by Upton Sinclairs devastating, fact-based novel about the meatpacking industry in Chicago, The Jungle, had helped to create the Food and Drug Administration in 1906. In 1962 Silent Spring, Rachel Carsons well-documented account of the environmental and health risks of pesticides, became a best-seller. But apart from such occasional exposés and sporadic movements for reform, consumers as a group did not exert a significant, ongoing force in the conduct of public affairs until Ralph Nader came along. 在内德之前，已经有了很多重要的消费者维权运动。阿普顿·辛克莱所写的关于芝加哥肉类加工业的无可辩驳的纪实小说《屠场》的出版，激起了人们的普遍义愤，从而促成了美国食品医药管理局于1906年诞生。1962年，雷切尔·卡尔森佐证翔实的纪实文献《寂静的春天》，讲述了农药对环境与人类健康带来的危险，成为当时的畅销书。但是，除了这些偶尔出现的曝光和零星的改良运动，消费者作为一个群体，并没有在公众事务的决定中施加重要而持久的影响力，这种局面一直持续到内德的出现。 It may interest readers in Beijing to know that at Princeton University, Ralph Nader, the son of Lebanese immigrants, studied Chinese, as well as other languages. He also explored another unorthodox topic: the engineering design of automobiles. Later, while studying law at Harvard University, he published an article pointing out that Detroit was designing automobiles for style and higher profit margins, but not - despite million injuries yearly - for safety. Nader turned that article into a book titled Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In