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本文給2016考研同學推薦的英語泛讀文章是“基因與安慰劑效應”。這是一篇生物醫學話題的文章，也是考研英語應該準備的重點題材。本文的觀點認為：安慰劑效應也許取決于個體DNA(The effectiveness of a placebo may depend on someone’s DNA)，這是一個非常有意思的新發現。來看一下具體內容：

Give someone who is sick a sugar pill that you have told him is a powerful drug, and it will often make him feel better. Even if you tell him what it really is, he may still feel better. The placebo effect, as this phenomenon is known—from the Latin for “I shall please”—is one of the strangest things in medical science. It is a boon to doctors and a bane of those running clinical trials, who must take account of it in their designs. But how it works is obscure.

給病人一粒糖片，而你告訴他這是一顆特效藥，這粒糖片常常能使他感覺好許多。即使你告訴他這顆藥的真相，他也許依舊感覺不錯。安慰劑效應——該詞來源于拉丁語“我將安慰”，被認為是醫學中最奇怪的現象之一。它對醫生來說是福利，而對那些臨床試驗工作者卻是煩惱，因為在他們的試驗設計中必須考慮到這一因素。至于安慰劑效應是如何起作用的，仍難以解釋。

One thing that is known about the placebo effect is that it involves several brain systems, each under the control of a particular type of messenger molecule, called a neurotransmitter. These systems, like everything else in the body, are regulated by genes. This has led some researchers to ask whether different versions of the genes in question might modulate a person’s susceptibility to placebos.

關于安慰劑效應，已知的一點是它涉及到了幾個大腦系統，每一個都由一種特殊的信使分子控制，稱為“神經遞質”。和機體其他系統一樣，這些系統也是由基因控制。這讓一些研究者產生了疑問：涉及到的不同基因版本是否可能調節個體對安慰劑的敏感性。

A review of these researchers’ studies, published recently in Trends in Molecular Medicine by one of them, Kathryn Hall of Harvard Medical School, and her colleagues, suggests genes do indeed seem to matter. Dr Hall looked for links between the placebo effect’s strength and certain mutations, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), in which a single DNA “letter” in a gene is changed.

最近，由哈佛大學醫學院研究人員凱瑟琳·霍爾(Kathryn Hall)和她同事一同發表在《分子醫學進展》上的一篇綜述表明：基因確實很關鍵。霍爾博士尋找了安慰劑效應強度和某些基因突變之間的聯系，這些突變被稱為“單核苷酸多態性”(SNPs)，其基因中單個DNA的堿基“字母”序列發生改變。

這類題材的泛讀是非常有必要的，可以增加我們對相關文化背景信息的了解，從而順利地理解文章。考研英語的復習需要持之以恒的努力，希望大家再接再厲，考研任重道遠，堅持才會成功，加油！