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新发展研究生英语 综合教程 2 教师用书

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1. We continue to share with our remotest ancestors the most tangled and evasive

attitudes about death, despite the great distance we have come to understanding some

of the profound aspects of biology. (Para. 1): Although we have made great progress in understanding biological issues, we still have ambiguous and vague attitudes towards death, reluctant to talk about it, just as what our forefathers did long time ago.

(v.): involve in sth. that hampers, obstructs or overgrows

tanglee.g. The bushes were tangled with vines.

evasive (a.): not willing to give clear answers to a question.

e.g. She felt his answer to be evasive.

2. Death on a grand scale does not bother us in the same special way: we can sit around

a dinner table and discuss war, involving 60 million volatilized human deaths, as

though we were talking about bad weather; we can watch abrupt bloody death every day, in colour, on films and television, without blinking back a tear. (Para. 1): Usually we do not feel as awkward when we talk about the death as when we talk about subtle issues such as venereal disease or abortion in the old days. When we sit around and talk about a war in which 60 million people died we talk about the topic in the same indifferent manner as we talk about bad weather. When we watch death on films and television we adopt the same indifferent manner without shedding tears. ―Volatilize‖ here is used metaphorically to compare the death of people as the pass off of water as vapor. 3. It is when the numbers of dead are very small, and very close, that we begin to think

in scurrying circles. (Para. 1): Although we appear indifferent to the death on a large scale, however, when it comes to personal death, with small numbers and around us, we begin to think thoroughly while walking nervously and quickly in a circle in the room. 4. “The long habit of living,” said Thomas Browne, “indisposeth us to dying.” (Para. 2): ―It

is the long habit of living that makes us unwilling to face the fact of death.‖ said Thomas Browne. ―Indisposeth‖ is the old usage of ―indisposes‖.

indispose (v.): render unwilling, make unfit

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Unit 8 e.g. (1) Heavy taxes indispose a citizen to work hard. (2) Hot weather indisposes a man to work hard.

5. We have come a long way in our technologic capacity to put death off, and it is

imaginable that we might learn to stall it for even longer periods, perhaps matching

the life-spans of the Abkhasian Russians, who are said to go on for a century and a

half. (Para. 3): The remarkable technological progress allows us to live longer. Chances are that we might learn to delay death for a longer time so as to live as long as the Abkhasian Russians, who are said to live for 150 years.

stall (v.): prevent from happening for a short period of time

e.g. If they stall for time on this contract, they may get a better price.

6.

If we became free of disease, we would make a much better run of it for the last decade or so, but might still terminate on about the same schedule as now. (Para. 3): If we could keep healthy before death, we would live a better life in about last ten years before we die. However, we can not stop the coming of death and will die exactly within the same genetically determined life span as it is now.

terminate (v.): bring to an end; put an end to

e.g. Where necessary, the Chief Executive may terminate their contracts.

7. They prefer to take it for granted that we only die because we get sick, with one lethal ailment

or another, and if we did not have our diseases we might go on indefinitely. (Para. 5): They

would like to accept the idea that death is the result of sickness, either one deadly chronic disease or another. So if we had the capacity to be free of disease, we might live endlessly.

lethal (a.): of, or causing death

e.g. (1) The chemical is lethal to rats but safe for cattle.

(2) A hammer can be a lethal weapon.

ailment (n.): a physical disorder or illness

e.g. She suffered from a liver ailment.

8. In the simplest creatures it is sometimes difficult to see it as death, since the strands of

replicating DNA they leave behind are more conspicuously the living parts of themselves

than with us (not that it is fundamentally any different, but it seems so). (Para. 5): For the simplest creatures, sometimes it is difficult to notice their death because the DNA

replications left before their death are so remarkably similar to them that we may regard

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新发展研究生英语 综合教程 2 教师用书

the replications as them. We human beings do not leave the DNA replications after our death as these simplest creatures do. However, this does not mean we and the simplest creatures have fundamentally difference, though apparently we seem different.

replicate (v.): repeat, duplicate or reproduce, esp. for experimental purpose

e.g. (1) If the virus cannot replicate, it cannot cause illness.

(2) Computer viruses are small programs. They replicate by attaching a copy of

themselves to another program.

9. Flies do not develop a ward round of diseases that carry them off, one by one. They

simply age, and die, like flies. (Para. 5): Flies do not die from various ailments that human doctors see during their circuit among the patients in a hospital ward. The reason for their death is just aging.

cause the death of

carry off :e.g. The Black Plague in the Middle Ages carried off more than one-fourth of the

population of Europe.

10. We hanker to go on, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not

necessarily pleasurable in the kind of society we have arranged thus far. (Para. 6):

We are longing to live indefinitely, even if there is an obvious proof that longevity may not be comfortable and pleasant in the society which hasn‘t developed to the extent as to cope with the aged group effectively and efficiently.

11. Even if we could imagine the act of death in isolation, without any preliminary stage

of being struck down by disease, we would be fearful of it. (Para. 7): Even if we could face the idea of death when we are alone, we would be frightened by death without enough psychological and emotional preparation that we can have when we are attacked by certain disease before death.

12. There are signs that medicine may be taking a new interest in the process, partly

from interest, partly from an embarrassed realization that we have not been handling this aspect of disease with as much skill as physicians once displayed, back in the days before they became convinced that disease was their solitary and sometimes defeatable enemy. (Para. 8): The new interest in the process of dying can be seen in medical professionals. There are two reasons for the new interest. First, it is the professional interest. Second, the medical professionals embarrassingly realize that 174

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they can not deal with the process of dying as skillful as physicians in the old days when diseases were believed to be isolated, sometimes can be defeated.

13. Some of our technology permits us to deny its existence, and we maintain flickers of life

for long stretches in one community of cells or another, as though we were keeping a flag flying. (Para. 8): The development of some technology allows us to claim the non-existence of death. We believe that the sign of life of one clout of cells or another never turned off, it just passes on (to some new clout of cells). This kind of life stretch is just like holding a flag flying, without putting it down. ―Keeping a flag flying‖ here is a metaphor used to illustrate thepassing of life from one clout of cells to another.

flicker (n.): an unsteady light that goes on and off quickly.

e.g. (1) She is reading by the flicker light of the candle.

(2) The last flickers seem to have died out.

14. You can, if you like, recover great numbers of them many hours after the lights

have gone out, and grow them out in cultures. It takes hours, even days, before the irreversible word finally gets around to all the provinces. (Para.8): If you like you can make a large number of cells alive again many hours after they died; you can cultivate them in tissue cultures. By doing so, you can delay the announcement of death on a nationwide scale for hours or even days.

15. He was so amazed by the extraordinary sense of peace and calm, and total painlessness,

associated with his partial experience of being killed, that he constructed a theory that all creatures are provided with a protective physiologic mechanism, switched on at the verge of death, carrying them through in a haze of tranquility. (Para. 10): He was shocked by the unusual peaceful, relaxed and painless feelings during the course of an incomplete dying. He thus set up a theory, claiming that there is a protective physiologic mechanism in all creatures, which is turned on when beings are faced with death, helping creatures fall into a state of vague peacefulness during the course of dying.

tranquility (n): calmness; peacefulness

e.g. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his

citizenship rights.

16. One man underwent coronary occlusion with cessation of the heart and dropped for

all practical purposes dead in front of a hospital, and within a few minutes his heart

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新发展研究生英语 综合教程 2 教师用书

had been restarted by electrodes and he breathed his way back into life. (Para. 12): One man suffered from coronary occlusion and his heart stopped beating. He was put in front of a hospital due to lack of money. By providing electrodes treatment, his heart beat again and he breathed again, being alive again.

17. According to his account, the strangest thing was that there were so many people

around him, moving so urgently, handling his body with such excitement, while all his awareness was of quietude. (Para. 12): According to his description, the strangest thing in his experience of dying was the sharp contrast between people around him, who moved in a hurry and dealt with his body excitedly, and himself, who was immersed in a complete peacefulness.

(n.): calmness, peace, and quietness

quietudee.g. Sometimes I like listening to the music that can bring me quietude.

18. In a recent study of the reaction to dying in patients with obstructive disease of the

lungs, it was concluded that the process was considerable more shattering for the

professional observers than the observed. (Para. 13): Recently a study was carried out investigating dying in patients with obstructive disease of the lungs. According to it, dying strikes more to the medical professionals who observe the course than to the dying people.

shattering (a.): very shocking and upsetting

e.g. The fact that the raised animals were eaten as food was a shattering experience for them.

19. One elderly woman reported that the only painful and distressing part of the process

was in being interrupted; on several occasions she was provided with conventional

therapeutic measures to maintain oxygenation, and each time she found the experience of coming back harrowing, she deeply resented the interference with her dying. (Para. 13): According to the report of an elderly woman, the only painful and upset feeling in the course of dying was to be interrupted. She survived several times from death by conventional therapeutic treatment, which provided her enough oxygenation. She felt painful being alive again and hated the interruption of her dying.

hallowing (a.): extremely disturbing or distressing

e.g. (1) To see someone killed is a very harrowing experience.

(2) The film is about the men on their harrowing search, as they increasingly question their mission.

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