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Increasingly, Americans are becoming their own doctors, by going online to diagnose their symptoms,
order home health tests or medical devices, or even self-treat their illnesses with drugs from Internet
pharmacies (药店). Some avoid doctors because of the high cost of medical care, especially if they lack
health insurance. Or they may stay because they find it embarrassing to discuss their weight, alcohol
consumption or couch potato habits. Patients may also fear what they might learn about their health, or
they distrust physicians because of negative experiences in the past. But playing doctor can also be a deadly
game.
Every day, more than six million Americans turn to the Internet for medical answers-most of them
aren't nearly skeptical enough of what they find. A 2002 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project
found that 72 percent of those surveyed believe all or most of what they read on health websites. They
shouldn't. Look up "headache", and the chances of finding reliable and complete information, free from a
motivation for commercial gain, are only one in ten, reports an April 2005 Brown Medical School study. Of
the 169 websites the researchers rated, only 16 scored as "high quality". Recent studies found faulty facts
about all sorts of other disorders, causing one research team to warn that a large amount of incomplete,
inaccurate and even dangerous information exists on the Internet.
The problem is most people don't know the safe way to surf the Web. "They use a search engine like
Google, get 18 trillion choices and start clicking. But that's risky, because almost anybody can put up a site
that looks authoritative (权威的), so it'd hard to know if what you're reading is reasonable or not," says Dr.
Sarah Bass from the National Cancer Institute.
1. According to the text, an increasing number of American _____.
A. are suffering from mental disorders
B. turn to Internet pharmacies for help
C. like to play deadly games with doctors
D. are skeptical about surfing medical websites
2. Some Americans stay away from doctors because they _____.
A. find medical devices easy to operate
B. prefer to be diagnosed online by doctors
C. are afraid to face the truth of their health
D. are afraid to misuse their health insurance
3. According to the study of Brown Medical School, ______.
A. more than 6 million Americans distrust doctors
B. only 1/10 of medical websites aim to make a profit
C. about 1/10 of the websites surveyed are of high quality
D. 72% of health websites offer incomplete and faulty facts
4. Which of the following is the author's main argument?
A. It's cheap to self-treat your own illness.
B. It's embarrassing to discuss your bad habits.
C. It's reasonable to put up a medical website.
D. It's dangerous to be your own doctor.

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