In this section, you have short passages. After each passage, you will find some items based on the passage. Read the passage carefully and answer the items based on it. You are required to select your answers based solely on the contents of the passage and the opinion of the author.
Passage:
During the past three generations the diseases affecting western societies have undergone dramatic changes. Polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis, commonly known as TB, are vanishing; one injection of an antibiotic often cures deadly diseases such as pneumonia or syphilis; and so many mass killers have come under control that two-thirds of all death are now associated with the diseases of old age. Those who die young are more often than not victims of accidents, violence, or suicide. These changes in health status are generally equated with the decrease in suffering and attributed to more or better medical care. Almost everyone believes that at least one of his friends would not be alive and well except for the skill of a doctor. But there is in fact no evidence of any direct relationship between this change in the pattern or nature of sicknesses on the one hand and the so-called progress of medicine on the other hand. These changes are the results of political technological changes. They are not related to the activities that require the preparation and status of doctors or the costly equipment in which doctors take pride. In addition, an increase in the number of new diseases in the last fifteen years are themselves the result for medical intervention. They are doctor-made or iatrogenic.
The writer probably is arguing for
- Astopping the practice of western medicines completely
- Bstopping the use of costly equipment and medicines
- Crethinking about the successes and failures of the western medicines
- Dgiving greater attention to new, iatrogenic diseases than to the old diseases such as polio, diphtheria and pneumonia
Explanation
The passage's climax is its final claim: the new diseases of the last fifteen years are 'themselves the result of medical intervention' - doctor-made, iatrogenic. The writer is not calling for abolishing western medicine (A) or its equipment (B); and while he does reassess medicine's record (C), his pointed argument is that attention must shift to these new doctor-made diseases rather than the conquered old ones. Hence option D is correct.