VOA慢速英语:How a 1959 Discovery Saves Premature Babies Today

We told you last week about a study which found that more than ten percent of all babies worldwide are born too early. One common problem in preterm babies is respiratory disease. The lungs are the last organs to develop. But a medicine called surfactant can save babies struggling to breathe.
上周，我们告诉你一项研究，全世界超过10%的婴儿早产。早产儿常见问题之一是呼吸系统疾病。肺是最后发育的器官。但是，一种被称为表面活性剂 的药物可以拯救呼吸困难的婴儿。

The story of this lifesaving medicine begins with a discovery in nineteen fifty-nine by a researcher named Mary Ellen Avery. She told this story in two thousand five to Children's News at Children's Hospital Boston, where she was the first woman to serve as physician-in-chief.
这种救命药的故事始于1959年一位名为Mary Ellen Avery的研究员的发现。2005年她向波士顿儿童医院的《儿童新闻》讲述了这一故事，在那里，她是第一位担任主任医师的女性。

She had been doing research at the Harvard School of Public Health. She was asked to find out more about the foam that forms in the lungs of people with a condition called pulmonary edema. At night she worked in a hospital delivery room. She saw many premature babies with hyaline membrane disease, now called respiratory distress syndrome.
她曾在哈佛大学公共卫生学院从事研究工作。她被要求找出更多有关人们形成肺水肿的信息。晚上她在一家医院的产房工作，看到了许多患有肺透明膜病，现在被称为呼吸窘迫综合征的早产儿。

She examined the lungs of babies who had died. She found there was no air in their lungs, and she discovered why. In her words, "The material that was important -- the foam -- was missing, and they were struggling to re-inflate their lungs. Nature put this foam, or surfactant, in the lung to lower surface tension. You cannot keep air spaces inflated without it."
她检查了已经死亡婴儿的肺部。发现在他们的肺部没有空气，并且找出了原因。用她的话来说，“这种非常重要的泡沫物质消失了，而它们在竭力重新扩张肺部。造物主向肺部注入这种活性物质来降低肺泡表面张力。如果没有它，就没法保证肺泡空隙膨胀。”

Babies usually develop this coating while they are in the womb, but many premature babies do not.
婴儿通常会在子宫孕育期间生成这种表面活性物质，但许多早产儿并没有生成这种物质。

Finally, in nineteen eighty, a Japanese pediatrician, Tetsuro Fujiwara, published a study about an artificial surfactant. It could be given to a baby and, within minutes, the baby could breathe.
最后，在1980年，日本儿科医生Tetsuro Fujiwara发表了一篇有关人工表面活性剂的研究。它可以提供给婴儿，婴儿在几分钟之内就能呼吸。

The medical community had taken years to accept Dr. Avery's discovery. But she said in a Harvard Medical School interview in nineteen eighty-two that she never gave up.
医学界花了很多年才接Avery医生的发现。但她1982年在哈佛医学院的面试中说，她从来没有放弃。

MARY ELLEN AVERY: "Hanging in there is key, I think. Knowing what you want to do and not being easily discouraged is key, particularly in research. You know, you're always moving into the unknown. And you can spend months trying to prove something, only to find that you made some terrible mistakes and you have to be willing to say 'six months of my life and my hard work went down the drain,' and you have to start over -- that's terrible discouragement."
MARY ELLEN AVERY：“关键就是坚持，我想。知道你想要做什么，同时不要轻易气馁是关键，尤其是在研究中。你知道，你在不确定中前进。你可能花几个月时间试图证明一些东西，结果却发现自己犯了一些可怕的错误同时不得不说，‘我这六个月的辛勤工作都成了泡影。’而你必须重新开始，这太令人沮丧了。”

Dr. Anne Hansen in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Children's Hospital Boston remembers the first time she heard about Dr. Avery. It was in nineteen ninety, when the government was in the process of approving an early surfactant called Exosurf. The attending doctor she was working with in the unit had some news for her.
波士顿儿童医院新生儿重症监护室的Anne Hansen医生还记得自己第一次听到Avery医生。那是在1990年，当时政府正在审批一种名为Exosurf的早期表面活性剂。

ANNE HANSEN: "And the attending [doctor] who I was on with said, 'When you're on call tonight, if there's a baby who's born who's premature, you should watch very closely the natural history of that disease, because this is the last night before we're going to start giving Exosurf to all our preterm babies, so this will be your last chance ever in your life to see what a preterm baby does when they don't receive Exosurf.' And then he told me the whole story of Dr. Avery and her discoveries."
ANNE HANSEN：“当时和我一起值班的主治医生说，'当你晚上值班时，如果有早产儿，你应该密切观察这种疾病的自然历程，因为这是我们将开始对早产儿使用Exosurf前的最后一个夜晚，因此这将是你生命中看到未使用Exosurf的早产儿的最后一次机会。' 然后他告诉我Avery医生与其发现的全部故事。

Mary Ellen Avery was eighty-four years old when she died last December fourth.
Mary Ellen Avery去年12月4日去世，享年84岁。