考研政治在线课程

考研英语双语阅读材料：衡量生命价值

Government agencies calculate these trade-offs regularly. The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has established a cost of about $9.5 million per life saved as a benchmark for determining whether to clean up a toxic waste site.

政府机构定期计算这样的取舍。例如，美国环护署(Environmental Protection Agency)设定了一个标准，每拯救一个生命的成本约为950万美元，将其作为是否清理有毒废物场地的决定基准。

Other agencies use similar values to assess whether to invest in reducing accidents at an intersection or to tighten safety standards in a workplace. The Department of Agriculture has a calculator to estimate the economic costs — medical care, premature deaths, productivity loss from nonfatal cases — of food-borne disease.

其他机构使用类似的方法进行量化评估，以决定是投资减少十字路口的事故，还是加强工作场所的安全标准。农业部有一个计算标准，用来估计食源性疾病的经济成本——医疗保健、过早死亡、非致命病例造成的生产力损失。

Now, some economists have decided to stick their necks out and apply this thinking to the coronavirus pandemic.

现在，一些经济学家决定冒险把这种想法应用到冠状病毒大流行上。