阿司匹林的新生 VOA英语.docVIP

[VOA科学报道]Aspirin: Research Keeps Giving New Life to an Ancient Medicine By George Grow and Jerilyn Watson2009-10-19 VOICE ONE: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. Im Bob Doughty. VOICE TWO: And Im Faith Lapidus. This week, we will tell the story of aspirin. (MUSIC) VOICE ONE: People have known since ancient times that aspirin can reduce pain and high body temperature. But that is not all the drug can do. It has gained important new uses in recent years. Low amounts may help prevent health threats from stroke to heart attack. Recently, researchers reported that aspirin could help patients with one kind of cancer live longer. At the same time, doctors warn that acid in aspirin can cause bleeding in the stomach and intestines. But there is promising evidence of a way to reduce the risk of bleeding. A newly reported British study suggests that taking another drug with a small amount of aspirin may help solve the problem. If that proves true, it would help thousands of people who are seeking to prevent life-threatening conditions. VOICE TWO: So, how did aspirin become so important? The story begins two thousand years ago with a willow tree. The Greek doctor Hippocrates advised his patients to chew on the bark and leaves of the willow. The tree contains a chemical called salicin. In the eighteen hundreds, researchers discovered how to make salicylic acid from the chemical. In eighteen ninety-seven, a chemist named Felix Hoffmann at Friedrich Bayer and Company in Germany created acetyl salicylic acid. Later, it became the active substance in a medicine that Bayer called aspirin. The a came from acetyl. The spir came from the spirea plant, which also produces salicin. And the in? That is a common way to end medicine names. VOICE ONE: In nineteen eighty-two, a British scientist shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in part for discovering how aspirin works. Sir John Vane found that aspirin blocks the body from making natural substances called prostaglandi