In the 1920s demand for American farm products fell, as European countries began to recover from World War I and instituted austerity (紧缩) programs to reduce their imports. The result was a sharp drop in farm prices. This period was more disastrous for farmers than earlier times had been, because farmers were no longer self-sufficient. They were paying for machinery, seed, and fertilizer, and they were also buying consumer goods. The prices of the items farmers bought remained constant, while prices they received for their products fell. These developments were made worse by the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and extended throughout the 1939s.In 1929, under President Herbert Hoover, the Federal Farm Board was organized. It established the principle of direct interference with supply and demand, and it represented the first national commitment to provide greater economic stability for farmers.President Hoover"s successor attached even more importance to this problem. One of the first measures proposed by President Franklin Roosevelt when he took office in 1933 was theAgricultural Adjustment Act, which was subsequently passed by Congress. This law gave the Secretary of Agriculture the power to reduce production through voluntary agreements with farmers who were paid to take their land out of use. A deliberate scarcity of farm products was planned in an effort to raise prices. This law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on the grounds that general taxes were being collected to pay one special group of people. However, new laws were passed immediately that achieved the same result of resting soil and providing flood-control measures, but which were based on the principle of soil conservation. The Roosevelt Administration believed that rebuilding the nation"s soil was in the national interest and was not simply a plan to help farmers at the expense of other citizens. Later the government guaranteed loans to farmers so that they could buy farm machinery, hybrid (杂交) grain, and fertilizers. The Supreme Court rejected the Agricultural Adjustment Act because it is believed to ______.
A. cause greater scarcity of farm products
B. give the Secretary of Agriculture enough power
C. benefit neither the government nor the farmers
D. benefit one group of citizens at the cost of others
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A nine year old schoolgirl single handedly cooks up a science fair experiment that ends up debunking (揭……的真相) a widely practiced medical treatment. Emily Rosa"s target was a practice known as therapeutic (治疗的) touch (TT for short), whose advocates manipulate patients" "energy field" to make them feel better and even, say some, to cure them of various ills. Yet Emily"s test shows that these energy fields can"t be detected, even by trained "IT practitioners (行医者). Obviously mindful of the publicity value of the situation, Journal editor George Lundberg appeared on TV to declare, "Age doesn"t matter. It"s good science that matters, and this is good science."Emily"s mother Linda Rosa, a registered nurse, has been campaigning against TT for nearly a decade. Linda first thought about TT in the late "80s, when she learned it was on the approved list for continuing nursing education in Colorado. Its 100,000 trained practitioners (48,000 in the U.S.) don"t even touch their patients. Instead, they waved their hands a few inches from the patient"s body, pushing energy fields around until they"re in "balance." TT advocates say these manipulations can help heal wounds, relieve pain and reduce fever. The claims are taken seriously enough that TT therapists are frequently hired by leading hospitals, at up to $70 an hour, to smooth patients" energy, sometimes during surgery.Yet Rosa could not find any evidence that it works. To provide such proof, TT therapists would have to sit down for independent testing—something they haven"t been eager to do, even though James Randi has offered more than $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate the existence of a human energy field. (He"s had one taker so far. She failed.) A skeptic might conclude that TT practitioners are afraid to lay their beliefs on the line. But who could turn down an innocent fourth grader Says Emily: "I think they didn"t take me very seriously because I"m a kid."The experiment was straight forward: 21 TT therapists stuck their hands, palms up, through a screen. Emily held her own hand over one of theirs left or right and the practitioners had to say which hand it was. When the results were recorded, they"d done no better than they would have by simply guessing. If there was an energy field, they couldn"t feel it. What can we learn from the passage
A. Some widely accepted beliefs can be deceiving
B. Solid evidence weighs more than pure theories
C. Little children can be as clever as trained TT practitioners
D. The principle of TT is too profound to understand
The Supreme Court"s decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering. Although it ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Court in effect supported the medical principle of "double effect", a centuries-old moral principle holding that an action having two effects—a good one that is intended and a harmful one that is foreseen—is permissible if the actor intends only the good effect.Doctors have used that principle in recent years to justify using high doses of morphine to control terminally ill patients" pain, even though increasing dosages will eventually kill the patient. Nancy Dubler, director of Montefiore Medical Center, contends that the principle will shield doctors who "until now have very, very strongly insisted that they could not give patients sufficient mediation to control their pain if that might hasten death." George Annas, chair of the health law department at Boston University, maintains that, as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to hasten death. "It"s like surgery," he says. "We don"t call those deaths homicides because the doctors didn"t intend to kill their patients, although they risked their death. If you"re a physician, you can risk your patient"s suicide as long as you don"t intend their suicide." On another level, many in the medical community acknowledge that the assisted-suicide debate has been fueled in part by the despair of patients for whom modem medicine has prolonged the physical agony of dying.Just three weeks before the Court"s ruling on physician-assisted suicide, the National Academy of Science (NAS) released a two-volume report,Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life.It identifies the under treatment of pain and the aggressive use of "ineffectual and forced medical procedures that may prolong and even dishonor the period of dying" as the twin problems of end-of-life care.The profession is taking steps to require young doctors to train in hospices, to test knowledge of aggressive pain management therapies, to develop a Medicare billing code for hospital-based care, and to develop new standards for assessing and treating pain at the end of life. Annas says lawyers can play a key role in insisting that these well-meaning medical initiatives translate into better care. "Large numbers of physicians seem unconcerned with the pain their patients are needlessly and predictably suffering," to the extent that it constitutes "systematic patient abuse". He says medical licensing boards "must make it clear.., that painful deaths are presumptively ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license suspension. " George Annas would probably agree that doctors should be punished if they ______.
A. manage their patients incompetently
B. give patients more medicine than needed
C. reduce drug dosages for their patients
D. prolong the needless suffering of the patients
In the 1920s demand for American farm products fell, as European countries began to recover from World War I and instituted austerity (紧缩) programs to reduce their imports. The result was a sharp drop in farm prices. This period was more disastrous for farmers than earlier times had been, because farmers were no longer self-sufficient. They were paying for machinery, seed, and fertilizer, and they were also buying consumer goods. The prices of the items farmers bought remained constant, while prices they received for their products fell. These developments were made worse by the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and extended throughout the 1939s.In 1929, under President Herbert Hoover, the Federal Farm Board was organized. It established the principle of direct interference with supply and demand, and it represented the first national commitment to provide greater economic stability for farmers.President Hoover"s successor attached even more importance to this problem. One of the first measures proposed by President Franklin Roosevelt when he took office in 1933 was theAgricultural Adjustment Act, which was subsequently passed by Congress. This law gave the Secretary of Agriculture the power to reduce production through voluntary agreements with farmers who were paid to take their land out of use. A deliberate scarcity of farm products was planned in an effort to raise prices. This law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on the grounds that general taxes were being collected to pay one special group of people. However, new laws were passed immediately that achieved the same result of resting soil and providing flood-control measures, but which were based on the principle of soil conservation. The Roosevelt Administration believed that rebuilding the nation"s soil was in the national interest and was not simply a plan to help farmers at the expense of other citizens. Later the government guaranteed loans to farmers so that they could buy farm machinery, hybrid (杂交) grain, and fertilizers. The Agricultural Adjustment Act encouraged American farmers to ______.
A. be self-sufficient in agricultural production
B. make full use of their land
C. adjust the prices of their farm products
D. reduce the expense in agricultural items
The media can impact current events. As a graduate student at Berkeley in the 1960s, I remember experiencing the events related to the People"s Park that were occurring on campus. Some of these events were given national media coverage in the press and on TV. I found it interesting to compare my impressions of what was going on with perceptions obtained from the news media. I could begin to see events of that time feed on news coverage. This also provided me with some healthy insights into the distinctions between these realities.Electronic media are having a greater impact on the people"s lives every day. People gather more and more of their impressions from representations. Television and telephone communications are linking people to a global village, or what one writer calls the electronic city. Consider the information that television brings into your home every day. Consider also the contact you have with others simply by using telephone. These media extend your consciousness and your contact. For example, the video coverage of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake focused on "live action" such as the fires or the rescue efforts. This gave the viewer the impression of total disaster. Television coverage of the Iraqi War also developed an immediacy. CNN reported events as they happened. This coverage was distributed worldwide. Although most people were far away from these events, they developed some perception of these realities.In 1992, many people watched in horror as riots broke out on a sad Wednesday evening in Los Angeles, seemingly fed by video coverage from helicopters. This event was triggered by the verdict (裁定) in the Rodney King beating. We are now in an age where the public can have access to information that enables it to make its own judgments, and most people, who had seen the video of this beating, could not understand how the jury (陪审团) was able to acquit (宣布无罪) the policemen involved. Media coverage of events as they occur also provides powerful feedback that influences events. This can have harmful results, as it seemed on that Wednesday night in Los Angeles. By Friday night the public got to see Rodney King on television pleading, "Can we all get along" By Saturday, television seemed to provide positive feedback as the Los Angeles riot turned out into a rally for peace. The television showed thousands of people marching with banners and cleaning tools. Because of that, many more people turned out to join the peaceful event they saw unfolding (展开) on television. The real healing, of course, will take much longer, but electronic media will continue to be a part of that process. The 1992 Los Angeles riots broke out because ______.
A. video coverage from helicopters had made people angry
B. video coverage had provided powerful feedback
C. the jury acquitted the policemen who had beaten Rodney King
D. people can make their own Judgment