新闻周刊:对抗耐药菌(9)

Slowing the Superbugs

减缓超级细菌

Although the pharmaceutical² industry has all but abandoned antibiotics⁴, researchers haven't given up hope of finding new ones. The antibiotic³ revolution was kicked off in 1928, when Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to his London lab only to find a weird-looking mold growing in a dish he had left by an open window. Ever since, researchers have tried to peek⁵ into every corner of nature for the next great bacteria-killer⁶. According to recent studies, among the new sources of substances that appear lethal⁷ to even resistant⁸ bacteria—yet may be safe for human consumption—are insects, seaweed, the mucus on young fish, arsenic-rich dirt in Ireland and even Martian soil. One team at Leiden University in the Netherlands is trying to build an artificial bacterium⁹ from scratch in hopes it can be tweaked to manufacture a new antibiotic.

尽管制药行业几乎已经放弃了抗生素，但研究人员并没有放弃寻找新抗生素的希望。抗生素革命始于1928年，当时度假归来的亚历山大?弗莱明在伦敦的实验室里发现了一种奇怪的霉菌。从那以后，研究人员一直试图深入自然界的每一个角落，寻找下一个伟大的细菌杀手。根据最近的研究，在一些新的物质来源中，昆虫、海藻、小鱼身上的黏液、爱尔兰富含砷的泥土，甚至是火星土壤，这些物质即使对具有抗药性的细菌来说也是致命的，但对人类来说可能是安全的。荷兰莱顿大学的一个研究小组正在尝试从无到有地制造一种人工细菌，希望能对其进行微调，从而制造出一种新的抗生素。

Doctors are also trying to make the best use of antibiotics we have now by slowing the development of new resistant strains. That calls for cutting back on rampant¹⁰ overuse of antibiotics, which encourages superbugs to evolve. Doing so has to become an international effort, because the resistant bugs¹ in one part of the world often made their way from elsewhere.

医生们还试图通过减缓新的耐药菌株的发展来最大限度地利用我们现有的抗生素。这就要求减少抗生素的过度使用，因为过度使用会促使超级细菌进化。这样做必须成为一项国际性的努力，因为世界上某一地区的抗药性细菌往往是从其他地方传播过来的。

Developing countries are becoming a particularly frequent source for emergent bacterial¹¹ threats that end up in the U.S., notes UConn's Banach. Studies have found that in most of the world antibiotics are readily dispensed¹² from community pharmacies¹³ without prescriptions¹⁴, contributing to a 65 percent climb in global antibiotic use between 2000 and 2015. The resulting resistant bugs skip frictionlessly around the world in the guts¹⁵ of millions of international travelers. “The impact of antibiotic overuse in these countries, as well as living and environmental conditions, are facilitating the worldwide spread of resistant organisms,” he says.

康州大学的巴拿赫指出，发展中国家正成为最终出现在美国的突发细菌威胁的一个特别频繁的来源。研究发现，在世界上大多数地方，抗生素很容易在没有处方的情况下从社区药店配药，这使得2000年至2015年间全球抗生素使用量上升了65%。由此产生的耐药细菌在全球数百万国际旅行者的肠道内无摩擦地跳过。“这些国家抗生素过度使用的影响，以及生活和环境条件，正在促进耐药生物在世界范围内的传播，”他表示。

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Patients have a role to play too. Pressuring doctors to prescribe antibiotics for mild congestion¹⁶, urinary tract¹⁷ infections or slow-to-heal wounds contributes to antibiotic overuse and the resulting resistance. Massachusetts public health officials have been pushing physicians and the public to ease up on antibiotics for more than a decade, and the state was rewarded with a 16 percent drop in prescriptions over a four-year period. A small victory, perhaps, in a large war that we have so far been mostly losing.

病人也有责任。对医生施加压力，要求医生为轻度充血、尿路感染或伤口愈合缓慢开抗生素处方，这导致了抗生素的过度使用和由此产生的耐药性。十多年来，马萨诸塞州的公共卫生官员一直在敦促医生和公众减少抗生素的使用，在四年的时间里，该州的处方量减少了16%。也许，在一场我们到目前为止几乎已经输掉的大战中，这是一场小小的胜利。

The cost of our failure to act a decade or more ago to this easily foreseeable crisis will most likely be a spreading tide of severe illness and death. It won't rise to the level of deadly mass outbreak the way a killer virus like Ebola could. But resistant infections will begin to affect more and more of us. Even if medicine, government and industry embarked¹⁸ today on a massive effort to find new approaches to combat resistant infections like the Columbia E. coli —which they aren't close to doing—the payoff wouldn't come for a decade or more.

十多年前，我们未能对这场容易预见的危机采取行动，其代价很可能是严重疾病和死亡的蔓延。它不会像埃博拉这样的致命病毒那样大规模爆发。但是耐药感染将开始影响越来越多的人。即使医药、政府和工业界从今天开始就大规模努力寻找新的方法来对抗耐药感染，如哥伦比亚大肠杆菌（对抗这种细菌还有很长的路要走），成果回报也要等到十年后甚至更久。

1 bugs   

adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误

参考例句：

• All programs have bugs and need endless refinement. 所有的程序都有漏洞，都需要不断改进。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The sacks of rice were swarming with bugs. 一袋袋的米里长满了虫子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 pharmaceutical   

adj.药学的，药物的；药用的，药剂师的

参考例句：

• She has donated money to establish a pharmaceutical laboratory.她捐款成立了一个药剂实验室。
• We are engaged in a legal tussle with a large pharmaceutical company.我们正同一家大制药公司闹法律纠纷。

3 antibiotic   

adj.抗菌的；n.抗生素

参考例句：

• The doctor said that I should take some antibiotic.医生说我应该服些用抗生素。
• Antibiotic can be used against infection.抗菌素可以用来防止感染。

4 antibiotics   

n.（用作复数）抗生素；（用作单数）抗生物质的研究；抗生素，抗菌素( antibiotic的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• the discovery of antibiotics in the 20th century 20世纪抗生素的发现
• The doctor gave me a prescription for antibiotics. 医生给我开了抗生素。

5 peek   

vi.偷看，窥视；n.偷偷的一看，一瞥

参考例句：

• Larry takes a peek out of the window.赖瑞往窗外偷看了一下。
• Cover your eyes and don't peek.捂上眼睛，别偷看。

6 killer   

n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者

参考例句：

• Heart attacks have become Britain's No.1 killer disease.心脏病已成为英国的头号致命疾病。
• The bulk of the evidence points to him as her killer.大量证据证明是他杀死她的。

7 lethal   

adj.致死的；毁灭性的

参考例句：

• A hammer can be a lethal weapon.铁锤可以是致命的武器。
• She took a lethal amount of poison and died.她服了致命剂量的毒药死了。

8 resistant   

adj.(to)抵抗的，有抵抗力的

参考例句：

• Many pests are resistant to the insecticide.许多害虫对这种杀虫剂有抵抗力。
• They imposed their government by force on the resistant population.他们以武力把自己的统治强加在持反抗态度的人民头上。

9 bacterium   

n.(pl.)bacteria 细菌

参考例句：

• The bacterium possibly goes in the human body by the mouth.细菌可能通过口进入人体。
• A bacterium is identified as the cause for his duodenal ulcer.一种细菌被断定为造成他十二指肠溃疡的根源。

10 rampant   

adj.(植物)蔓生的；狂暴的，无约束的

参考例句：

• Sickness was rampant in the area.该地区疾病蔓延。
• You cannot allow children to rampant through the museum.你不能任由小孩子在博物馆里乱跑。

11 bacterial   

a.细菌的

参考例句：

• Bacterial reproduction is accelerated in weightless space. 在失重的空间，细菌繁殖加快了。
• Brain lesions can be caused by bacterial infections. 大脑损伤可能由细菌感染引起。

12 dispensed   

v.分配( dispense的过去式和过去分词 )；施与；配（药）

参考例句：

• Not a single one of these conditions can be dispensed with. 这些条件缺一不可。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• They dispensed new clothes to the children in the orphanage. 他们把新衣服发给孤儿院的小孩们。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

13 pharmacies   

药店

参考例句：

• Still, 32 percent of the pharmacies filled the prescriptions. 但仍然有32%的药剂师配发了这两张药方。 来自互联网
• Chinese herbal pharmacies, and traditional massage therapists in the Vancouver telephone book. 中药店，和传统的按摩师在温哥华的电话簿里。 来自互联网

14 prescriptions   

药( prescription的名词复数 )； 处方； 开处方； 计划

参考例句：

• The hospital of traditional Chinese medicine installed a computer to fill prescriptions. 中医医院装上了电子计算机来抓药。
• Her main job was filling the doctor's prescriptions. 她的主要工作就是给大夫开的药方配药。

15 guts   

v.狼吞虎咽，贪婪地吃，飞碟游戏（比赛双方每组5人，相距15码，互相掷接飞碟）；毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的第三人称单数 )；取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 )；内脏；消化道的下段；肠

参考例句：

• I'll only cook fish if the guts have been removed. 鱼若已收拾干净，我只需烧一下即可。
• Barbara hasn't got the guts to leave her mother. 巴巴拉没有勇气离开她妈妈。 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 congestion   

n.阻塞，消化不良

参考例句：

• The congestion in the city gets even worse during the summer.夏天城市交通阻塞尤为严重。
• Parking near the school causes severe traffic congestion.在学校附近泊车会引起严重的交通堵塞。

17 tract   

n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林)

参考例句：

• He owns a large tract of forest.他拥有一大片森林。
• He wrote a tract on this subject.他曾对此写了一篇短文。

18 embarked   

乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事

参考例句：

• We stood on the pier and watched as they embarked. 我们站在突码头上目送他们登船。
• She embarked on a discourse about the town's origins. 她开始讲本市的起源。