《考研英語(yǔ)閱讀理解100篇 高分版》 Unit 18 - TEXT FOUR

Infertility is normally seen as a private matter. If a couple are infertile and wish they were not, that is sad. But there is understandable resistance in many countries to the idea that treatments intended to deal with this sadness—known collectively as assisted reproductive technologies, or ARTs—should be paid for out of public funds. Such funds are scarce, and infertility is not a life-threatening condition.
However, two papers presented to the “State of the ART” conference held earlier this month in Lyon argue that in Europe, at least, there may be a public interest in promoting ARTs after all. The low fertility rate in many of that continent's more developed countries means their populations are aging and shrinking. If governments want to change this, ARTs—most significantly invitro fertilisation (IVF)—could offer at least part of a way to do so.
As the conference heard, IVF does seem to be keeping up the numbers in at least one country. Tina Jensen of the University of Southern Denmark has just finished a study of more than 700,000 Danish women. She found that young women in Denmark have a significantly lower natural conception rate than in past decades. That is partly, but not entirely, because they are having their children later in life. The rest of the cause is unknown, though reduced sperm quality in men may be a factor. Whatever the cause, she also found that the effect has been almost completely compensated for by an increasing use of ARTs. Denmark's native population is more or less stable, but some 3.9% of babies born there in 2003 were the result of IVF. The comparable figure for another northern European country, Britain, was 1.5%.
Without IVF, then, the number of Danes would be shrinking fast. That it is not may have something to do with the fact that in Denmark the taxpayer will cover up to six cycles of IVF treatment. In Britain, by contrast, couples are supposed to be entitled to three cycles. In practice, many of the local trusts that dish the money out do not pay for any cycles at all. Jonathan Grant, the head of the Cambridge branch of the Rand Corporation (an American think-tank), believes this is shortsighted. His paper showed that if Britain supported IVF at the Danish level then its birth rate would probably increase by about 10,000 a year.
The cost of offering six cycles to couples (and doing so in practice, rather than just in theory) would be an extra ￡250m-430m a year. That is not trivial, but Dr. Grant reckons it is cheaper than other ways of boosting the birth rate. Some countries, for example, have tried to bribe women into having more children by increasing child benefits. According to his calculations, raising such benefits costs between ￡50,000 and ￡100,000 a year for each additional birth procured. Ten thousand extra births each year would thus cost between ￡500m and ￡1 billion.
There are, of course, some disadvantages to promoting IVF. In particular, women who use it tend to be older than those who conceive naturally, and that can lead to congenital problems in their children. But if the countries of Europe do wish to keep their populations up, making IVF more widely available might be a good way of doing so.
1. According to the text, the public's opinion on the infertility treatments is that _____.
[A] the treatments should be paid for out of public funds
[B] the treatments are not so compulsory as they consume the limited public funds
[C] the treatments are not necessarily only paid for out of public funds
[D] the public is not obliged to pay for such treatments of no urgent nature
2. According to the study conducted by Tina Jensen, which one of the following statements is TRUE?
[A] ARTs have reversed the tendency of population decreasing in Denmark.
[B] Danes' problem of low natural conception has been completely counterbalanced by the widely use of ARTs.
[C] The population of Denmark is not decreasing after the adoption of ARTs.
[D] IVF has played an essential role in Denmark in terms of keeping up the number of population.
3. From the paper of Dr. Grant, it can be inferred that _____.
[A] the cost of offering six cycles of IVF to couples is not high at all
[B] IVF treatment is an economical way of solving population shrinking
[C] Britain does not promote adopting IVF to boost the birth rate
[D] encouraging women to bear more babies by bonus is not so efficient to solve the problem of population shrinking
4. The word “congenital” (Line 2, Paragraph 6) most probably means _____.
[A] innate
[B] instinctive
[C] cerebral
[D] acquired
5. According to the passage, the author's attitude towards promoting invitro fertilization can be said to be _____.
[A] supportive
[B] opposing
[C] ambiguous
[D] objective