外刊精选2020全国新高考课外补充阅读训练1.pdfVIP

外刊精选2020 全国新高考课外补充阅读训练1 外刊精选2020 全国新高考课外补充阅读训练 1 第一篇 【新闻正文】 Getting hold of penicillin in 1943 was a lottery in America.The miracle drug had been discovered 15 years earlier but production capacity was limited, and most went to the war effort. What remained was rationed, and a single injection cost at least $40. By 1949 better manufacturing methods allowed the price to fall to 20 cents. The use of penicillin exploded. Antibiotics subsequently became a staple of modern medicine. Massive volumes offset low margins. No longer. Finding new molecules is getting harder, which means higher development costs. At the same time, growing awareness that overuse accelerates development of bacterial resistance to the drugs has led to antibiotics stewardship, the practice of using the newest antibiotics only for infections untreatable with older ones. Volumes, in other words, are often disappointing. With returns from antibiotics down, big pharmaceutical companies have abandoned them for more lucrative drugs. GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Merck are the only three doing clinical research in the field. Small biotechnology firms tried to pick up the slack. In the past ten years, as the world began to panic about the rise of resistant superbugs, governments and charities provided early-stage financing. Like big pharma, though, the biotech startups have struggled to make money from antibiotics. An American one, Achaogen, filed for bankruptcy on April 15th; plazomicin, a novel antibioticit began selling in 2018,sold barely any doses in the first eight months. Melinta, another antibiotics startup, is restructuring. Share prices of similar firms have plunged, in some cases below their liquidation value. 【参考词汇】 Penicillin N. any of various antibiotics obtained from Penicillium molds 青霉素 Lottery N. something that is regarded as a