PrepTest 118, Section 3, Question 17

What we’re looking for

Working the answers

• A

  An expensive drug could be difficult to distribute. That explains why widespread use might be hard to achieve, not why widespread use would be dangerous. Cost isn't the problem we're being asked to reconcile with the drug's favorable effects.

• B

  Missing doses might make treatment less successful. But the answer doesn't tell us what harmful consequence follows from the low compliance. We could invent one, yet we'd be doing work the answer hasn't done. E identifies a specific danger created by use of the drug, making it a much more direct explanation.

• C

  A treatment could help the patient without stopping transmission to others. That limit on its benefits doesn't by itself explain why using it widely would be dangerous. We aren't told that the drug increases transmission or creates some new harm by failing to prevent it. Don't turn 'doesn't solve this other problem' into 'makes the situation worse.'

• D

  Fatal overdoses are certainly dangerous, so this deserves consideration. But the explanation is limited to taking more than the prescribed dose. The passage doesn't give us a reason to expect widespread misuse. E supplies a danger that can arise from using the drug, without adding the condition that patients take too much. That's the closer fit to the warning about widespread use.

• E
  Correct

  The drug helps now, but its use contributes to deadlier forms of chicken pox that resist the drug. We can accept its present effectiveness and still worry about the danger it helps create.

  This isn't an ordinary side effect in the treated patient. It's a change in the disease that can undermine future treatment and make the disease more dangerous. That explains how a currently useful treatment could have harmful consequences when used widely. We don't have to deny either of the favorable facts.