THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE.

1. Study the words in the box.

- What part of speech is each word?

- Which nouns can be changed into verbs? Which verbs can be changed into nouns? Check the stress and pronunciation?

- What do the underlined prefixes mean?

1. Study the words in the box. Match each word in the left-hand column with a word in the right-hand column.
   example: base pair

1. Read the heading of each text.
   -What theme links the four texts together?
   - Read text A and look at the underlined words. Connect each word to the noun it refers to.
   Example: those refers to previously mentioned nouns (organs and tissues).

A. Cloning and regenerative medicine
Currently, organs and tissues from living donors are transplanted in order to replace those which are failing or destroyed. However, in many cases the demand for replacement organs far outstrips supply, to the point where they are for sale, offered by poverty-stricken donors in third-world countries. A new method of organ replacement, using deceased donors, has now been developed. It has been used successfully in an operation to provide a patient with a new trachea. This process replaces the DNA in the donated organ, using stem cells generated from the recipient tissue. In case of the trachea transplant it took almost six weeks to complete. Because of the DNA transfer, the recipient’s body reorganized the transplanted trachea as her own and did not reject it. This is a major development which holds out the potential of using the technique for other hollow organs, such as lungs, in the near future.

B. A model for ending global inequalities in health
A child born in Sweden is almost 30 times more likely to reach the age of five than a child born in Swaziland.
While the national rates conceal variations in mortality between rich and poor, urban and rural, it is possible to suggest that national wealth is the key factor in determining mortality.
However, the evidence clearly indicates that mortality is affected by factors other than national wealth. The most striking example is the comparison between the United States and Cuba. Though life expectancy in both is virtually identical, the former spends less that $200 per person on healthcare while the latter spends almost $4,400 per person. Copper R et al. state that much of this is due to relatively small amounts invested in infrastructure combined with a well-developed public heath strategy. As Copper R et al. go on to emphasize, ‘if the experience of Cuba could be extended to other poor and middle-income countries human health would be transformed’. However, since the 1980s Cuba has also been involved in technology developments. The research, development and marketing of advanced drugs on a world-wide scale illustrates how much can be achieved by a low-income countries.

C. The medical potential of nanotechnology
Developments in nanotechnology have enormous potential to revolutionize drug delivery systems. The overall aim is to allow drugs to be delivered to the areas within the body which they are targeting. The active ingredients of drugs are placed inside a wrapper that is genetically designed to locate a particular part of the body. The wrapper is attracted to the cell receptors of the relevant area and attached to it, discharging its active ingredients. Early results are very impressive. Delivering anti-cancer drugs to the brain has been a major problem due to the blood-brain barrier. However, anti-cancer drugs bound to nanomaterials have successfully crossed the blood-brain barrier and released the drugs at therapeutic concentrations in the brain.

D. Dealing with future pandemics
It is not clear where the HIV virus emerged from. What is clear is that since the recognition of the pandemic in 1981, around 25 million people worldwide have lost their lives to it. The anti-retroviral rugs which have helped fight HIV/AIDS owe little to the advances in genetic research which have taken place over the last 15 years. It is to this research that we must look when we face up to new threats of pandemics. The example of H5N1 (also known as bird flu), which appeared to jump from birds to humans, is perhaps the most widely known. The great understanding of human biology and viral reproduction which has emerged from recent research into the human genome gives us a vital weapon in this fight. However, the delay in providing victims of AIDS with anti-retroviral drugs to fight the disease, because of the desire of the drug companies to make money, suggests that this knowledge may not be equally applied to all countries and individuals.

1. Discuss the following questions.
   - Why do you think research into the human research is particularly important to the future of medicine?
   - How do you think such research can help doctors deliver better care to their patients?
   
   
2. Survey the text. What will the text be about? Write three questions to which you would like answers.
   
   
3. Read the text. Does it answer your questions?