“Placebo”isaLatinword.Itmeans“Ishallplease.”And,sometim...

問題詳情：

“Placebo” is a Latin word. It means “I shall please.” And, sometimes , it just might .

When scientists want to test a new drug, they usually divide a large number of people into two groups . One group takes the medicine; the other takes a substance known as a placebo . It may contain nothing more than sugar. The people do not know which pill they are taking —the active one or the inactive one. In this kind of experiment, the medicine must perform better than the placebo to prove it is effective.

Yet people who take a placebo sometimes experience improvements in their health . This is known as the “placebo effect”, the effect of something that is not supposed to have any effect doctors even use the placebo effect in their treatments . They might tell patients that a new drug will stop their pain . The patient does not know that the pills are inactive . The patient takes the pills and later tells the doctor that the pain is gone .

Now , research in Sweden suggests that placebo treatments can also reduce the emotional effects of unpleasant experiences . The effects in the brain were similar to those seen when placebos have been used to ease pain . The researchers say that in both cases , expectations of improvement are a major influence on the effectiveness of placebos .

Predrag Petrovic of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm led the study . The findings appeared in the publication Neuron.

An influential study on placebos appeared in nineteen fifty-five . It said treatment with a placebo made patients feel better thirty-five percent of the time . But in two thousand –one , Danish researchers reported that they had examined more than one hundred studies . They found little evidence of healing as a result of placebos .

1．Why is “a placebo” used in the experiment ?

       A．To test which medicine is active and which is inactive .

       B．To compare a new drug to an existing drug .

       C．To prove how active the “placebo effect” is .

       D．To determine the effectiveness of a medicinal drug .

2．According to research in Sweden , the placebo can reduce the patient’s pain mainly because

             .

       A．the pill is very effective                        B．the pill can please them

       C．they expect the improvement greatly     D．they believe in the doctors

3．The figure “nineteen fifty-five” （in Paragraph 6 ） is probably         

       A．the page of a magazine in Stockholm

       B．the number of patients involved in the experiment

       C．they year when the findings were published

       D．the time when Predrage Petrovic and his team tried their experiment

4．What would be the best title for this passage ?

       A．The Placebo Effect                             B．A New Research in Sweden

       C．A New Medicine Was Found                D．Active or Inactive ?

【回答】

DCCA

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