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  3. Instinctively, the first thing we want to know about a disease is whether it is going to kill us. Twenty-five years ago, this wa

Instinctively, the first thing we want to know about a disease is whether it is going to kill us. Twenty-five years ago, this wa

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问题     Instinctively, the first thing we want to know about a disease is whether it is going to kill us. Twenty-five years ago, this was the only question about AIDS we could answer with any certainty; now, it is the only question we really cannot answer well at all.
    By now, those of us in the AIDS business long term have cared for thousands of patients. No one with that kind of personal experience can doubt for a moment the deadly potential of H. I. V. or the life-saving capabilities of the drugs developed against it. But there are also now hundreds of footnotes and exceptions and modifications to those two facts that make the big picture ever murkier(扑朔迷离).
    We have patients scattered at every possible point: men and women who cruise on their medications with no problems at all, and those who never become stable on them and die of AIDS; those who refuse them until it is too late, and those who never need them at all; those who leave AIDS far behind only to die from lung cancer or breast cancer or liver failure, and those few who are killed by the medications themselves.
    So, when we welcome a new patient into our world, one whose fated place in this world is still unclear, and that patient asks us, as most do, whether this illness is going to kill him or not, it often takes a bit of mental stammering(口吃)before we hazard an answer.
    Now, a complete rundown of all the news from the front would take hours. The statistics change almost hourly as new treatments appear. It is all too cold, too mathematical, too scary to dump on the head of a sick, frightened person. So we simplify. " We have good treatments now," we say. " You should do fine. "
    Once, not so long ago, we were working in another universe. Now we have simply rejoined the carnival(嘉年华)of modern medicine, noisy and encouraging, confusing and contradictory, fueled by the eternal balancing of benefits and risks.
    You can win big, and why shouldn’t you, with the usual fail-safe combination of luck and money. You have our very best hopes, so step right up: we sell big miracles but, offer no guarantees.
By "mental stammering" , the author means______.
选项 A、they cannot give an absolute answer to AIDS patients
B、they hesitate to tell the truth to AIDS patients who will die
C、they need to think about whether patients will die of AIDS
D、they have to make up excuses to comfort AIDS patients
答案A
解析 语义理解题。本题考查对“mental stammering”的语义理解。由定位段可知，当作者和他的同事们将一个新患者迎进他们的世界里时，对于命运给病人在这个错综复杂的世界里安排了什么位置，他们仍然心中无数。由此可知，当病人问他们自己是否会死于艾滋病时，他们也不能给出肯定答案，故答案为A)。由此可排除B)“他们犹豫着告诉将死的艾滋病人实情”、C)“他们需要考虑下病人是否会死于艾滋病”和D)“他们需要编造借口来安慰艾滋病人”。
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