PrepTest 133, Section 2, Question 1
Studies have shown that treating certain illnesses with(42 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(8 more words not shown)
- AUnlike treatment Y,(10 more words not shown)
- BThere are other(11 more words not shown)
- CUntil recently, treatment(7 more words not shown)
- DTreatment Y is(8 more words not shown)
- EA third treatment,(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Same benefit, but at what cost?
If two treatments help with the same illnesses, I can see why we'd prefer the quicker, cheaper one. Those are real advantages for X. But a treatment can work and still make you miserable. What if it also causes severe nausea or painful ulcers? Saving time and money might not be worth that tradeoff.
The argument has told us about the benefits, speed, and price. It hasn't told us that those are the only things that matter. We can accept everything in the studies and still wonder whether X has a serious downside that Y avoids.
What we’re looking for
We're looking for a weakener, so I'd look for that downside. Harmful side effects would be a good place to start. We don't have to show that X never works; we need a reason to question preferring it to Y for these illnesses.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
X has caused harmful side effects in laboratory animals, while Y has not. That gives us the omitted downside we were looking for: X might help with the illness while causing another problem.
Be careful about what we've learned. These are animal results, not proof that human patients will suffer the same effects. Evidence of harmful effects in people would be more direct. Still, the animal results give us a reason for concern about X that we don't have about Y. None of the other answers supplies a stronger reason to doubt the recommendation.
- B
Other illnesses aren't the illnesses in this argument. Y might be the better treatment for a completely different disease, while X remains preferable for the conditions being discussed. The recommendation is limited to these illnesses, so evidence about another group doesn't challenge it.
- C
What matters to this recommendation is the price now. X could have been very expensive last year and become cheaper than Y this year. That history doesn't take away its current price advantage.
- D
Why do physicians prescribe Y more often? Perhaps some simply aren't familiar with X yet. We'd have to add a reason for their prescribing habits before those habits showed that X is worse. A directly identifies a possible harm; D leaves us guessing about what the physicians know and why they act.
- E
We aren't choosing the best treatment out of every treatment available. We're comparing X with Y. Z could be better than both without changing which of those two we should prefer. If the conclusion had called X the best possible treatment, Z would matter. That isn't the claim here.
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