评论
打印
Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil. And I'm Beth.
大家好。这里是BBC六分钟英语。我是Neil。我是Beth。
In our lifetime, 1 in 5 people will be affected by cancer, a disease where cells grow uncontrollably and cause tumours in the body.
在我们的一生中，每5人中就有1人会患上癌症，这是一种细胞不受控制地生长并导致体内肿瘤的疾病。
Tumours can be benign, meaning not cancerous, or malignant, meaning cancerous, and in 2022 there were an estimated 9.7 million deaths from malignant cancers worldwide. But in this programme, we'll be focusing on some good news instead.
肿瘤可以是良性的，即非癌性的，也可以是恶性的，即癌性的，2022年全球估计有970万人死于恶性癌症。但在本期节目中，我们将关注一些好消息。
Vaccines are medicine which protect the human body by making it immune from a certain disease.
疫苗是一种保护人体免受某种疾病侵害的药物。
Now, there's been a sudden and important discovery – a breakthrough - in the development of a new vaccine called mRNA.
现在，在开发一种名为mRNA的新疫苗方面有了一项突破。
So, could a vaccine for cancer soon become a reality? That's what we'll be finding out, as well as learning some useful new words and phrases.
癌症疫苗很快就会成为现实吗？这就是我们要找到的答案，同时我们还会学习一些有用的新单词和短语。
And remember, if you like listening to 6 Minute English and want to read along at the same time, you can find a transcript for the programme on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.
请记住，如果您喜欢收听《六分钟英语》并想同时阅读，您可以在我们的网站bbclearningenglish.com上找到该节目的文字记录。
Now I have a question for you, Beth. We've mentioned some of the most recent vaccines, but which disease did the first successful vaccine treat?
现在我有一个问题要问您，Beth。我们提到了一些最新的疫苗，但第一种成功的疫苗治疗的是哪种疾病？
Was it: a) flu? b) polio? or c) smallpox? I'm going to say polio. OK! Well, we'll find out the correct answer at the end of the programme.
是：a)流感？b)脊髓灰质炎？还是c)天花？脊髓灰质炎。我们将在节目结束时揭晓正确答案。
You might wonder why the body's immune system doesn't fight cancer automatically.
您可能想知道为什么人体的免疫系统不会自动对抗癌症。
The reason is that cancer has clever ways of hiding from our natural defences, as Dr Meredith McKean, director of research at Tennessee Oncology, explained to BBC World Service programme, The Inquiry:
原因是癌症有巧妙的方法来躲避我们的自然防御，正如田纳西州肿瘤学研究主任梅雷迪斯·麦基恩（Meredith McKean）博士向BBC世界服务节目《调查》解释的那样：
There's been a number of studies that have demonstrated the different techniques that the cancer has developed to be able to put up signals or proteins, essentially, on the surface of the cancer cells, to tell the immune system, 'Go away! There's nothing here to look at!'
许多研究表明，癌症已经发展出不同的技术，能够在癌细胞表面发出信号或蛋白质，告诉免疫系统，“走开！这里没什么可看的！”
And so it's actually been hijacking these receptors to essentially tell the immune system to kind of take the brakes off, and be more aggressive in fighting cancer.
它实际上是劫持了这些受体，基本上是告诉免疫系统松开刹车，更积极地对抗癌症。
That's really allowed a breakthrough with immune therapy over the past decade.
这确实在过去十年中为免疫疗法带来了突破。
Dr McKean says that a number of studies have demonstrated how cancer spreads.
麦基恩博士说，许多研究表明癌症是如何扩散的。
She uses the phrase a number of to mean several, but it also makes her statement more convincing, because of course several studies are better than just one.
她使用“a number of”这个短语来表示几个，但这也使她的说法更有说服力，因为当然，几项研究比一项研究要好。
Cancer cells switch off the immune system by pretending to be healthy cells.
癌细胞通过伪装成健康细胞来关闭免疫系统。
It's like they're saying Nothing to see here! – an informal phrase which can be used to encourage people to move or look away from something, either in a playful way, or to cover something up.
这就像他们在说“Nothing to see here!”——这是一个非正式的短语，可以用来鼓励人们移动或将目光从某物上移开，要么是开玩笑，要么是掩盖某事。
For example, a police officer at a crime scene might say, "Nothing to see here!" to move people on.
例如，犯罪现场的警察可能会说“Nothing to see here!”来让人们继续前进。
So, in other words, cancer hijacks healthy cells – it takes control of something which doesn't belong to it and uses it for its own advantage.
换句话说，癌症劫持了健康细胞——它控制了不属于它的东西，并利用它来为自己谋利。
So, how would a vaccine change things? Well, existing treatments, like chemotherapy, aggressively target the cancer, but also attack healthy tissue, creating unpleasant side effects.
疫苗会如何改变现状呢？现有的治疗方法，如化疗，积极地针对癌症，但也会攻击健康组织，产生令人不快的副作用。
New breakthrough vaccines, on the other hand, retrain the immune system to recognise cancer cells and eliminate those, and only those, naturally – even in patients with the disease already.
另一方面，新的突破性疫苗重新训练了免疫系统，使其识别癌细胞并自然地消灭它们，而且只消灭它们——即使在已经患有这种疾病的患者中也是如此。
Here's, Professor Eduardo Sanchez, of the Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, explaining more to BBC World Service's, The Inquiry:
以下是德克萨斯州安德森癌症中心的Eduardo Sanchez教授向BBC国际服务频道《The Inquiry》进一步解释的内容：
Basically the cancer cells are telling the immune system, 'Don't attack me, don't eat me', right?
基本上，癌细胞是在告诉免疫系统，“不要攻击我，不要吃掉我”，对吧？
The immune system has forgotten how to go about recognising those cancer cells, becoming blind to recognise those aberrations that cancer cells generate, and what we want to do with vaccines is to re-educate the immune system.
免疫系统已经忘记了如何识别这些癌细胞，无法识别癌细胞产生的异常，而我们想要用疫苗重新教育免疫系统。
In cancer patients, the immune system is blind to cancerous growths – it completely fails to notice them or be aware of their danger, so the vaccine re-educates the immune system, or teaches it to behave, in a different way.
在癌症患者中，免疫系统对癌性生长视而不见——它完全没有注意到它们或意识到它们的危险，因此疫苗重新教育免疫系统，或教会它以不同的方式行事。
To recap, some cancer treatments work by unblocking our blocked natural defences, whereas vaccines retrain the immune system to find and attack cancer cells naturally.
总结一下，一些癌症治疗是通过解除我们被阻断的自然防御来起作用的，而疫苗则是重新训练免疫系统，使其能够自然地发现和攻击癌细胞。
Because these two approaches are quite different, they can be used together and individually.
由于这两种方法截然不同，因此可以一起使用或单独使用。
So, to answer my original question, Neil, a vaccine for cancer might not be too far away. But how about your question – isn't it time you revealed the answer?
回答我最初的问题，Neil，癌症疫苗可能并不遥远。但你的问题呢——难道你不该揭晓答案吗？
I asked which disease was first successfully treated by a vaccine? And I said polio. Was I right? You were wrong, I'm afraid. The correct option was C, which is smallpox.
我问哪种疾病是第一个被疫苗成功治疗的？我说是脊髓灰质炎。我说对了吗？恐怕你错了。正确的选项是C，即天花。
OK, let's recap the vocabulary we've learned in this programme, starting with breakthrough, a sudden, dramatic and important discovery.
让我们回顾一下本期节目中学到的词汇，从breakthrough开始，意思是一个突然的、戏剧性的和重要的发现。
A number of something means several, or many, and can add credibility to what you say.
A number of something意味着几个或很多，可以增加你所说的话的可信度。
The phrase, Nothing to see here! is used to discourage people from paying attention or looking too closely at something, or to move them away.
短语“Nothing to see here!”用于阻止人们注意或过于仔细地观察某物，或将他们赶走。
If you hijack something, you use something that does not belong to you for your own benefit. Being blind to something means failing to notice it or recognise it as a threat.
如果你hijack某物，你就会利用不属于你的东西来为自己谋利。Being blind to something意味着没有注意到它或将它视为威胁。
And finally, to re-educate means to teach somebody to think or behave in a new or different way.
最后，to re-educate意味着教某人以新的或不同的方式思考或行动。
Once again our six minutes are up, but if you're hungry for more, head over to our website, bbclearningenglish.com, where you can find the worksheet for this programme, as well as a quiz.
六分钟时间又到了，但如果你想了解更多，请访问我们的网站bbclearningenglish.com，在那里你可以找到这个节目的活页练习题以及测验。
Good luck and we'll see you again soon. Bye for now! Bye!
祝你好运，我们很快会再见。暂时再见！再见！
