摘要：雅思中國網雅思君這里跟大家分享一篇雅思課外讀物：China is ill prepared for a consequence of ageing: lots of people with dementia？人口老齡化集中表現在老年癡呆的人越來越多，關于這個現狀，《經濟學人》怎么看呢，一起來探個明白吧！

In the West most patients go to a care home for the final brutal stages of the disease, which can last more than a year. In China families carry most of the burden from beginning to end. The government has long underinvested in social care, assuming that adult children will take responsibility(在社會照護方面，政府長期投入不足，認為應該由長大的孩子來負責。). But this is unsustainable. Plunging birth rates since the 1970s, exacerbated(使加重;使惡化) by a one-child-per-couple policy, mean that the number of working-age adults per person over 65 will fall by 2050 from ten to 2.5. Migration into cities (see article) is leaving some elderly people in the countryside without family members to care for them.

Need for new thinking

The government has been slow to recognise the scale of the problem. It funds some dementia research, but the money goes to scientists looking for a cure, rather than to those trying to find ways of alleviating(減輕) the suffering of patients who have no chance of one. (政府資助了一些癡呆癥研究，但是擁有經費的科學家們尋找的是治療方案，而不是致力于找到辦法來減輕那些根本沒治的病人的痛苦。)“People don’t get Nobel prizes or grants for developing a strategy for community care,” says Dr Phillips.

In any country care can be expensive, both for families and governments. In China the government will find itself having to spend much more as relatives prove unequal to the task. Because family members rarely understand the condition, more than 90% of dementia cases go undetected(沒被發現的), according to a study led by Ruoling Chen of King’s College in London. Sufferers will benefit when the government at last realises it has to step in.

Vocabulary

anthem 贊美詩;頌歌

dementia 癡呆癥

short-term memory 短時記憶

life expectancy 期待壽命

obesity 肥胖癥

diabetes 糖尿病

woefully 不幸地

ailment 疾病

stigma 污名

compound 使......復雜化;化合物

crude 原始的;粗魯的

exacerbate 使......惡化

alleviate 減輕

undetected 未被發現的

讀句子，記雅思詞匯

1. No compound that would safely achieve the same feat in people has been found yet, but the search has beeninformative and has fanned hope that caloric-restriction (CR) mimetics can indeed be developed eventually.(劍6T3P3)

參考譯文：安全地在人類實現同樣效果的化合物還沒有找到，但是這份研究已經很有啟發性，最終開發出控熱仿生物的希望被點燃了。

2. Could such a‘caloric-restriction mimetic’, as we call it, enable people to stay healthy longer, postponing age-related disorders (such as diabetes, arteriosclerosis, heart disease and cancer) until very late in life? (劍6T3P3)

參考譯文：我們口中的這種“模擬熱量限制法”是否真的可以讓人們更長久地保持健康呢，也就是說是否可以推遲與年齡相關的疾病(比如糖尿病，動脈粥樣硬化，心臟病和癌癥)的發生，直到我們很大年紀呢?