英国新闻听力 你还能活多久

你曾经想过你可以活多久吗？现在出现了一些网站，你可以把你的一些信息，像是你是什么时候出生的还有你的生活方式填写进去，或者如果你真够勇敢或有病，你可以下载一个生命倒数记时器放在你电脑屏幕的角落。我个人不会认为这有什么不好的，但位于英格兰东部的一位家庭医生开发的计算机程序引起了我的好奇心，他的名字叫克里斯·马丁。当病人来到他的诊疗室求诊时，他都会启动手提电脑上的程序，在屏幕上显示出他们还可以活多长时间。

单词注释： 

Morbid¹ adj. 有病的，病态的 

cholesterol² n. 胆固醇 

stark³ adj. 刻板的 

verbal adj. 口头的 

consultation⁴ n. 咨询，会诊

CLAUDIA HAMMOND: Have you ever wondered how long you’d live? There are even websites now where you can fill in a few details about when you were born and your lifestyle, and if you’re really brave or morbid you can download a ticker that counts down the seconds left in your life in the corner of your computer screen. Personally I can’t think of anything worse, but I was intrigued⁵ to see the computer program developed by a family doctor, based in the east of England, called Chris Martin. When a patient comes to see him at his surgery, he whips out his laptop and shows them onscreen how long they might live. 

克劳迪娅?哈蒙德：你曾经想过你可以活多久吗？现在出现了一些网站，你可以把你的一些信息，像是你是什么时候出生的还有你的生活方式填写进去，或者如果你真够勇敢或有病，你可以下载一个生命倒数记时器放在你电脑屏幕的角落。我个人不会认为这有什么不好的，但位于英格兰东部的一位家庭医生开发的计算机程序引起了我的好奇心，他的名字叫克里斯?马丁。当病人来到他的诊疗室求诊时，他都会启动手提电脑上的程序，在屏幕上显示出他们还可以活多长时间。

CHRIS MARTIN: The main use for it really was communicating with smokers⁷. In that most smokers express the view that they, in inverted⁸ commas, “shouldn’t smoke”, but often clearly don’t understand that it’s not so much a moral issue, not naturally being a dirty habit, but it’s actually a matter of if it kills them. And using this model is a very effective way to actually show them just how lethal⁹ cigarette smoking is, and that’s not say, 9 times out of 10, that’s what the model is used for these days. 

克里斯?马丁：这个程序的主要用途实际上是针对吸烟者的。大多数的烟民表达他们的观点认为“不应该吸烟”，但显然他们还不明白，吸烟不只是一个道德问题，自然也不只是一个恶劣的习惯，而实际上是，吸烟会危害人们的生命。用这个程序是用一种非常有效的方式告诉他们一个事实，那就是吸烟的危害是致命的，这不用说，这几天这个程序10有9次都是用在这些上面。

CLAUDIA HAMMOND: So let’s have a go. So you’ve got you’re laptop here and if so I was to come and see you and say I smoked say 15 cigarettes a day, could you then show me what difference that would make? 

克劳迪娅?哈蒙德：那我们接着往下谈。你带来了你的手提电脑，假如我来向你求诊，我跟你说我一天要抽15根香烟，你能告诉我这有什么不同吗？

CHRIS MARTIN: I could, I mean I’d have to ask you lots of personal questions, like how old you are, and what you blood pressure is and things like that. But if we… 

克里斯?马丁：我能，我指的是我必须要询问你很多的私人问题像是你多大了，你的血压是多少等等之类。但是如果我们……

CLAUDIA HAMMOND: I’m 36, and you thought 35. Isn’t that nice? 

克劳迪娅?哈蒙德：我36了，你以为35。这样可以吗？

CHRIS MARTIN: There you go, I couldn’t go any lower, that’s why I put 35. Assuming you’ve got an average blood pressure and an average cholesterol, we’ll assume you don’t have any nasty diseases, and you’re not on any medication for blood pressure already. And what we can then do is compare you as a smoker⁶ with all those risk factors, with you as a nonsmoker with all those risk factors. So now I’ll show you over here on this graph. 

克里斯?马丁：你说到重点了，我不能再给你降了，所以为什么我说你35。假设你的血压和胆固醇指数都是正常的，我们会假设你没有任何不好的疾病，而且也没有进行过血压的药物治疗。我们接下来要做的就是把你同带有风险因素的吸烟者作比较，同带有风险因素的非吸烟者作比较。现在我要在这里显示出你的曲线图。

CLAUDIA HAMMOND: So you’ve got a graph here that most of it is blue and then there’s a big blue curve going across, and that fills up probably 3/4 of the screen, and there’s a tiny green bit on the edge of it, and there’s a red bit on the edge of it. 

克劳迪娅?哈蒙德：那么我们来看这里的曲线图，里面大部分的曲线都是蓝色的，到了这里有一条粗的蓝色曲线穿过，这条曲线占据了屏幕上大概3/4的地方，在这个的边上有一个绿色的小点，在那个的边上是一个红点。

CHRIS MARTIN: Well that red bit is the difference in survival between you as a smoker and you as a nonsmoker, so that red area is death from smoking. 

克里斯?马丁：那个红点就是你作为吸烟者和非吸烟者的差异，如果吸烟的话，红色区域表示的是因吸烟而导致死亡。

CLAUDIA HAMMOND: That is quite stark seeing it like that. 

克劳迪娅?哈蒙德：那样判断是非常刻板的。

CHRIS MARTIN: Yeah yeah. It kind of brings it home. 

克里斯?马丁：是的，这个我很清楚。 

CLAUDIA HAMMOND: So this graph is showing you your actual age that you might die at? Your life expectancy… 

克劳迪娅?哈蒙德：那么这个曲线图可以告诉你实际上可以活到多少岁吗？你的期望寿命……

CHRIS MARTIN: Well it shows…the axis¹⁰ on the left here is the probability of still being alive, and along the bottom you have the age from 36 up to 85. And obviously as you get towards 85 the curve gets lower and lower as the probability of still being alive gets lower and lower. Now, you can make an average estimate to how long you would live, and over on the left here it gives the averages. So if we were looking at you for example, someone with a normal blood pressure and not being a smoker you’d expect to live to about 84 on average. As a smoker you’d actually lose about five and a half years with smoking. 

克里斯?马丁：嗯它显示……左边这里的轴线就代表着你的存活概率，沿着它的底部你可以看到你的概率范围是36岁至85岁。很显然，你越接近85岁，随着你的生存概率越来越低，曲线的走势就会越来越低。现在，你可以来平均估算一下你还可以活多长时间，在这个轴线上面也会显示出来这个平均值。如果我们以你为例，血压正常，不吸烟，那么你的平均寿命大概是84岁左右。如果是个吸烟者，你会因此减少五年半的寿命。

CLAUDIA HAMMOND: So would you actually show it to people like that in your surgery? Would you actually say to them this is how many years you’re losing? 

克劳迪娅?哈蒙德：你会像这样出示曲线图给前来向你求诊的人吗？你会给他们讲解，告诉他们会失去多少年的寿命吗？

CHRIS MARTIN: Yes I would. On average you would lose five and a half years. 

克里斯?马丁：是的，我会。一般情况下会失去五年半的寿命。

CLAUDIA HAMMOND: And do you find that people understand what they’re looking at with these graphs? I mean not everyone is used to looking at graphs all the time, do you have to explain? 

克劳迪娅?哈蒙德：你认为人们明白这些曲线图讲得是什么吗？我的意思是不是每个人都善于看曲线图的，你还需要给他们讲解吗？

CHRIS MARTIN: Well, the great majority do because there are a number of different ways I can show them. Some people are verbal and like things described in words. 

克里斯?马丁：那个，大部分都需要，因为我给他们的讲解方式有好多种。有些人习惯口头的，希望用语言来描述给他们听。

CLAUDIA HAMMOND: So you’d tailor it to how each patient seems to be? 

克劳迪娅?哈蒙德：那么你给每个病人的讲解方式都是量身定做的？

CHRIS MARTIN: Yes. And you can sort of type their name in and print it out and give it to them so they can take it home and digest it at home and the same with the other groups. 

克里斯?马丁：是的。你可以分类输进他们的名字，打印出来让他们带回家去消化理解，其他的组也可以这么做。 

CLAUDIA HAMMOND: And do you think this makes more of a difference because it’s written in black and white on the computer screen, rather than if you just told them? 

克劳迪娅?哈蒙德：你认为这是否会造成更多理解上的差异，因为讲解的内容是输入到电脑里的，而不仅是你亲口告诉他们的？

CHRIS MARTIN: I think it does for two reasons. One, because there’s a certain authority that comes with computers these days, if the computer says so then that’s what happens. But also it allows you to print them out and for people to take that away and so when people are in a consultation with a doctor what we know is that people remember on average, about half of what is said, but if they’ve taken it away on a piece of paper they’d remember. The other factor was that it’s much more precise, because as doctors we’re obviously not necessarily terribly good at predicting these sorts of things. 

克里斯?马丁：我认为会，理由有两个。一个是因为目前电脑分析出来的都是有依据的，电脑上面显示的就是要发生的。而且你还可以打印出来让人们带走，所以当人们向医生咨询的时候，我们都知道人们能记住的，就平均而言，大概只有一半的内容，但是如果他们把事情记录在纸上带走的话，他们就会记住了。另一个原因是电脑分析的非常准确，作为医生，我们完全没有必要很擅长去预知这类事物。

CLAUDIA HAMMOND: So do you end up, I am imagining now that you might end up with very long consultations¹¹ while you do this with everybody. How do you fit this in? 

克劳迪娅?哈蒙德：这样就结束了吗，我现在在想你可能在结束长时间交谈的同时，给每个人做电脑分析。你是如何应对的？

CHRIS MARTIN: How do I fit it in? I use it perhaps once or twice a day and that would be the norm perhaps for my collogues who use it. So if it means a consultation lasts 12 minutes instead of 10, once a day, that’s 2 minutes a day. But also it may actually in the longer term reduce the consultations, because if someone goes away motive…treated motivated to stop smoking for example it’s extremely likely we’ll see less of them and they would book fewer appointments in the future. 

克里斯?马丁：我是如何应对的？我一天大概会分析一到两次，这个分析对我的同事使用它来说，将是一个标准。这意味着，一次咨询时间要持续了12分钟，而不是10分钟，一天一次的话，那么每天就多了2分钟。但我们实际也有可能在较长时期内减少咨询，如果有人远离动机……假如治疗的动机是戒烟，有极大的可能，我们将越来越少看到他们，在以后他们也将很少预约。

CLAUDIA HAMMOND: Well that’s one way of making some space in the waiting room, Dr. Chris Martin. 

克劳迪娅?哈蒙德：那这个方法可以为候诊室多留一点空间，对不对克里斯?马丁博士。

1 morbid   

adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的

参考例句：

• Some people have a morbid fascination with crime.一些人对犯罪有一种病态的痴迷。
• It's morbid to dwell on cemeteries and such like.不厌其烦地谈论墓地以及诸如此类的事是一种病态。

2 cholesterol   

n.（U）胆固醇

参考例句：

• There is cholesterol in the cell of body.人体细胞里有胆固醇。
• They are determining the serum-protein and cholesterol levels.他们正在测定血清蛋白和胆固醇的浓度。

3 stark   

adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地

参考例句：

• The young man is faced with a stark choice.这位年轻人面临严峻的抉择。
• He gave a stark denial to the rumor.他对谣言加以完全的否认。

4 consultation   

n.咨询；商量；商议；会议

参考例句：

• The company has promised wide consultation on its expansion plans.该公司允诺就其扩展计划广泛征求意见。
• The scheme was developed in close consultation with the local community.该计划是在同当地社区密切磋商中逐渐形成的。

5 intrigued   

adj.好奇的，被迷住了的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的过去式)；激起…的兴趣或好奇心；“intrigue”的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• You've really intrigued me—tell me more! 你说的真有意思—再给我讲一些吧！
• He was intrigued by her story. 他被她的故事迷住了。

6 smoker   

n.吸烟者，吸烟车厢，吸烟室

参考例句：

• His wife dislikes him to be a smoker.他妻子不喜欢他当烟民。
• He is a moderate smoker.他是一个有节制的烟民。

7 smokers   

吸烟者( smoker的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Many smokers who are chemically addicted to nicotine cannot cut down easily. 许多有尼古丁瘾的抽烟人不容易把烟戒掉。
• Chain smokers don't care about the dangers of smoking. 烟鬼似乎不在乎吸烟带来的种种危害。

8 inverted   

adj.反向的，倒转的v.使倒置，使反转( invert的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Only direct speech should go inside inverted commas. 只有直接引语应放在引号内。
• Inverted flight is an acrobatic manoeuvre of the plane. 倒飞是飞机的一种特技动作。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 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。

10 axis   

n.轴，轴线，中心线；坐标轴，基准线

参考例句：

• The earth's axis is the line between the North and South Poles.地轴是南北极之间的线。
• The axis of a circle is its diameter.圆的轴线是其直径。

11 consultations   

n.磋商（会议）( consultation的名词复数 )；商讨会；协商会；查找

参考例句：

• Consultations can be arranged at other times by appointment. 磋商可以通过预约安排在其他时间。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Consultations are under way. 正在进行磋商。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》