Passage 2The medical community owes economists a great deal. Amartya Sen won a Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in 1998. He has spent his entire career promulgating ideas of justice and freedom, with health rarely out of his gaze. Joseph Stiglitz won a Noble in 2001. In 1998, when he as chief economist at the (then) notoriously regressive World Bank, he famously challenged the Washington Consensus. And Jeff Sachs, a controversial figure to some critics, can fairly lay claim to the enormous achievement of putting health at the center of the Millennium Development Goals. His "Commission on Macroeconomics and Health" was a landmark report, providing explicit evidence to explain why attacking disease was absolutely necessary if poverty was to be eradicated. And I must offer my own personal gratitude to a very special group of economists-Larry Summers, Dean Jamison, Kenneth Arrow, David Evans, and Sanjeev Gupta. They were the economic team that drove the work of Global Health 2035.But although we might be kind to economists, perhaps we should be tougher on the discipline of economics itself. For economics has much to answer for. Pick up any economics textbook, and you will see the priority given to markets and efficiency, price and utility, profit and competition. These words have chilling effects on our quest for better health. They seem to marginalize those qualities of our lives that we value most of all-not our self-interest, but our humanity; not the costs and benefits of monetary exchange, but vision and ideals that guide our decisions. It was these issues that were addressed at last week's Global Health Lab, held at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.Anne Mills, Vice-Director of the School, fervently argued the case in favor of economists. It was they who contributed to understanding the idea of "best-buys" in global health. It was economists who challenged user fees. And it was economists who made the connection between health and economic growth, providing one of the most compelling political arguments for taking health seriously. Some economists might adore markets, but not health economists9 she said. "Health care is different." For her kind of economist, a health system is a "social institution that embodies the values of society".Although competition has a part to play in health, it should be used judiciously as a mechanism to improve the quality of care. Chris Whitty, Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK's Department for International Development, expressed his contempt for those who profess indifference to economics. Economics is about the efficient allocation of scarce resources. Anyone who backed the inefficient allocation of resources is immoral". He did criticize economists for their arrogance, though. Economists seemed to believe their ideas should be accepted simply because of the authority they held as economists. Economics, he said, is only one science among many that policy makers have to take into account. But Clare Chandler, a medical anthropologist, took a different view. She asked, what has neoliberal economics ever done for global health? Her answer, in one word, was "inequality". Neoliberal economics frames the way we think and act. Her argument suggested that any economic philosophy that put a premium on free trade, privatization, minimal and health sectors is a philosophy bereft of human virtue. The discussion that followed, led by Martin McKee, posed difficult questions. Why do economists pay such little attention to inequality? Why do economists treat their theories like religions? Why are economists so silent on their own failures? Can economics ever be apolitical? There were few satisfactory answers to these questions.1.Which of the following best describes the author's attitude towards economists?
A. Contempt. B. Reservation. C. Detachment. D. Endorsement. 2.Who holds a critical view on economists' role in medical field according to the passage?
A. Amartya Sen. B. Jeff Sachs. C. Larry Summers. D. Clare Chandler. 3.

相关问题推荐

• 植物产生顶端优势的原因是（）。
  A.顶芽附近的生长素浓度过高，促进生长B.侧芽附近的生长素浓度过高，抑制生长C.顶芽附近的细胞分裂素浓度过高，促进生长D.侧芽附近的细胞分裂素浓度过高，抑制生长

  查看答案
• 何谓运动缺乏?运动缺乏会对人体心肺功能产生哪些不良影响?

  查看答案
• 根据流传范围的大小，可将宗教分为民族宗教、国家宗教和世界宗教。民族宗教的是（）。
  A.佛教B.道教C.基督教D.伊斯兰教

  查看答案
• 下列关于人体内RNA的叙述，正确的是（）。
  A.都在细胞核内合成B.都由核糖核苷酸组成C.都能作为翻译的模板D.都具有规则的双螺旋结构

  查看答案
• Passage 1 Among the throngs of Americans prowling the malls and trawling e-commerce sites, many are looking out for themselves. Retail-research firm NPD Group said, thus far, about one third of consumers have engaged in what is called self-gifting. That's up from 12 percent in a typical pre- recession year, and up from the 19 percent who said they planned to do so last year. The National Retail Federation, the dispenser of all holiday-related data, said in 2012, nearly 60 percent of shoppers would do so. The latest step in the evolution of our burgeoning culture of narcissism? Yes. Self-gifting makes psychological and economic sense given what Americans have endured these years. THE POST-BUST(破产) era has been a long, hard, heroic slog of balance-sheet improvement. Americans have labored to save money and hack away at the huge mountain of debt they accumulated during the credit boom. According to the New York Federal Reserve, consumers have knocked down theiraggregate debt load from $12.67 trillion in the third quarter of 2008 to $11.31 trillion in the third quarter of 2012; credit-card debt is off $192 billion from the peak. Americans have cut their load by spending more carefully and engaging in that most un-American of traits: self-abnegation. After living frugally for so much of the year and for so many years who can blame a parent at an Apple Store for buying herself a new iPad? Indeed, self-gifting may actually be a function of the new abstemiousness. Let's say you’ve been holding off on replacing your old television. Why not buy it around November or December when insane promotions and free shipping are available? Besides, it's not like self-gifters are solely interested in self-pleasure. An NRF survey said that the typical self-gifter would spend about $140 on himself this year. For comparison's sake, the survey said the typical shopper would spent about $750 in all. After a long period of economic madness (remember the housing bubble and the dotcom mess), self-gifting is a sign of much-needed economic rationality. Shopping for others involves a certain amount of wrong guesswork with negative financial consequence. This year, for example, CEB TowerGroup claims that Americans will load $110 billion onto gift cards and givethem as presents. But the market-research firm says that about l.6 percent of that total, about $1.7 billion, will go unused. Meanwhile, a large percentage of gifts wind up getting returned. Adults surveyed by BIG insight in November 2012 found that 35 percent of people reported returning at least some of their gifts. Returns induce guilt and raise the specter of uncomfortable conversations about what happened to that giant striped sweater. But more significant, returns are bad for the environment. They lead to more trips to the mall, higher shipping costs, and the unnecessary use of packaging materials. These days, the rise of e-commerce means shopping is now antiseptic: sit and click. With the charm gone, we have to come up with other ways to make the experience pleasurable. As the song goes, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas.

  查看答案