雅思课外读物--《经济学人》对待人口老龄化的态度

摘要：雅思中国网雅思君这里跟大家分享一篇雅思课外读物：China is ill prepared for a consequence of ageing: lots of people with dementia？人口老龄化集中表现在老年痴呆的人越来越多，关于这个现状，《经济学人》怎么看呢，一起来探个明白吧！

In the West most patients go to a care home for the final brutal stages of the disease, which can last more than a year. In China families carry most of the burden from beginning to end. The government has long underinvested in social care, assuming that adult children will take responsibility(在社会照护方面，政府长期投入不足，认为应该由长大的孩子来负责。). But this is unsustainable. Plunging birth rates since the 1970s, exacerbated(使加重;使恶化) by a one-child-per-couple policy, mean that the number of working-age adults per person over 65 will fall by 2050 from ten to 2.5. Migration into cities (see article) is leaving some elderly people in the countryside without family members to care for them.

Need for new thinking

The government has been slow to recognise the scale of the problem. It funds some dementia research, but the money goes to scientists looking for a cure, rather than to those trying to find ways of alleviating(减轻) the suffering of patients who have no chance of one. (政府资助了一些痴呆症研究，但是拥有经费的科学家们寻找的是治疗方案，而不是致力于找到办法来减轻那些根本没治的病人的痛苦。)“People don’t get Nobel prizes or grants for developing a strategy for community care,” says Dr Phillips.

In any country care can be expensive, both for families and governments. In China the government will find itself having to spend much more as relatives prove unequal to the task. Because family members rarely understand the condition, more than 90% of dementia cases go undetected(没被发现的), according to a study led by Ruoling Chen of King’s College in London. Sufferers will benefit when the government at last realises it has to step in.

Vocabulary

anthem 赞美诗;颂歌

dementia 痴呆症

short-term memory 短时记忆

life expectancy 期待寿命

obesity 肥胖症

diabetes 糖尿病

woefully 不幸地

ailment 疾病

stigma 污名

compound 使......复杂化;化合物

crude 原始的;粗鲁的

exacerbate 使......恶化

alleviate 减轻

undetected 未被发现的

读句子，记雅思词汇

1. No compound that would safely achieve the same feat in people has been found yet, but the search has beeninformative and has fanned hope that caloric-restriction (CR) mimetics can indeed be developed eventually.(剑6T3P3)

参考译文：安全地在人类实现同样效果的化合物还没有找到，但是这份研究已经很有启发性，最终开发出控热仿生物的希望被点燃了。

2. Could such a‘caloric-restriction mimetic’, as we call it, enable people to stay healthy longer, postponing age-related disorders (such as diabetes, arteriosclerosis, heart disease and cancer) until very late in life? (剑6T3P3)

参考译文：我们口中的这种“模拟热量限制法”是否真的可以让人们更长久地保持健康呢，也就是说是否可以推迟与年龄相关的疾病(比如糖尿病，动脉粥样硬化，心脏病和癌症)的发生，直到我们很大年纪呢?