Q15 - Every year approximately the same number of people die

[Michelle5]

Hello,

I was wondering why answer choice E is incorrect? The researcher is saying that (for example) 100 people day from medical treatments, and 100 people die from all other causes. So if medicine could prevent the medical treatment deaths, 1/2 (100 less people) would die.

A: We are not talking about preventing NON-medical diseases
B: So what? This would only strengthen the information given of medical deaths being prevented
C: So if people do not die from medical deaths, they will die of something else? Are they saying here: If you have fatal cancer and you were going to get a surgery that would go wrong and kill you, but you do not have the surgery, you will still die from the fatal cancer, and thus 1/2 less people would NOT be stopped from dying? (what a morbid example sorry!!! haha i went for extremes)
D: The text says IF medicine could find a way, so this is wrong
E: I think my confusion is that it is kind of opposite of "C". I read it as Whenever a non-medical disease (not death) happens, there is a risk of a medical disease (since you are going to get treatment...) and if this is true, hmmm as I a reading this I guess if this is true it means nothing since the statements says "if medicine could find ways of preventing all non medical diseases"

Sorry if my train of thought is very long on this one, I want to make sure I understand it and I was trying to be as clear as possible.

Thank you kindly, I truly appreciate the assistance on this forum

[robowarren]

Thanks Michelle5, your explanation helped me figure out why C was right. At first I played it off as being too general, but after reading your post, your train of thought helped me see my errors.

[tobyna]

Can someone please explain the answer choices? I'm completely lost...I discarded C immediately, and was stuck between A and E -- clearly way off on this one.

Thank you!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

This argument seeks to prove that we can prevent half of all deaths, if we were able to eliminate all deaths from iatrogenic disease. What is iatrogenic disease? It's a disease that one suffers from hospitalization or medical treatment. Why does the author believe this is possible? Because half of all deaths are from iatrogenic disease.

The problem with this reasoning is that the people who are suffering from iatrogenic disease sought out help because they were in most cases already sick - why else would you be seeking medical treatment or hospitalization? If they were already sick, they may have died anyways (ex: from the heart disease for which they were seeking treatment). Answer choice (C) is very general, but does express this flaw committed in the argument.

Incorrect Answers
(A) is irrelevant. The argument does not assume that there will be no relationship between the prevention of noniatrogenic disease and occurrence of iatrogenic disease. Furthermore this answer choice doesn't even discuss death from iatrogenic disease.
(B) would not pose a problem for the argument since it would seem to support the conclusion that we can make things safer for patients seeking treatment.
(D) is too strong. The argument does not rely on there being one way to prevent iatrogenic death.
(E) suffers from the issue as answer choice (A). This does not discuss death from iatrogenic disease. The argument never suggests that iatrogenic disease would be eliminated, just death from such disease.

[cvoldstad]

Hello!

Thank you for your clarification on this question. I am still a little lost about why E is wrong, Matt said that
"(E) suffers from the issue as answer choice (A). This does not discuss death from iatrogenic disease. The argument never suggests that iatrogenic disease would be eliminated, just death from such disease"

Yet I see the stimulus does say that the disease would be eliminated "Therefore, if medicine could find ways of preventing all iatrogenic disease....
It seems that E is addressing a gap therefore in suggesting that preventing disease would not decrease the number of deaths because they could still occur...

[ohthatpatrick]

It might help to clarify that when we're arguing against a conclusion that's stated conditionally, we're only ever arguing with the 2nd half (the consequence).

For example, if my conclusion is:

If Sally came to the party, it would be lame.

Any idea that relates to whether or not Sally comes to the party is totally irrelevant.

The author's conclusion isn't assigning any likelihood or possibility to the idea that Sally is coming to the party.

I can say something like "If humans found life in another galaxy, humankind would be very excited" and not necessarily believe that it's likely or even possible that we'll find life in another galaxy. I'm only claiming that IF we did, I believe that something would follow.

So our only way to think through objections to this argument is to pretend we live in a world with ZERO iatrogenic disease and find a way to argue that the number of deaths would not really be cut in half.

As discussed earlier, we could just say "in a world with no hospitalization or medical treatments, we would have ZERO iatrogenic disease. But although we would have many fewer deaths from iatrogenic disease, zero in this scenario, we would have many NEW deaths happening as a result of no one who is sick ever being hospitalized or treated medically."

So the effect of (E) is merely to say, "Hey, author, you'll NEVER completely get rid of the risk of iatrogenic disease."

So what?

That's like telling me, "Hey, Patrick, we're NEVER going to be able to find life in another galaxy."

Okay, I didn't say we were. I just said that IF we did, people would be excited. You can only disagree with me by saying that finding life in another galaxy would NOT interest people.

You can only disagree with this author by saying that a world without ANY iatrogenic disease would NOT be a world with half the death rate.

Hope this helps.

[783874728]

wonderful explanation！！！Thank you！！！

[andrewgong01]

It might help to clarify that when we're arguing against a conclusion that's stated conditionally, we're only ever arguing with the 2nd half (the consequence).

For example, if my conclusion is:

If Sally came to the party, it would be lame.

Any idea that relates to whether or not Sally comes to the party is totally irrelevant.

The author's conclusion isn't assigning any likelihood or possibility to the idea that Sally is coming to the party.

I can say something like "If humans found life in another galaxy, humankind would be very excited" and not necessarily believe that it's likely or even possible that we'll find life in another galaxy. I'm only claiming that IF we did, I believe that something would follow.

So our only way to think through objections to this argument is to pretend we live in a world with ZERO iatrogenic disease and find a way to argue that the number of deaths would not really be cut in half.

As discussed earlier, we could just say "in a world with no hospitalization or medical treatments, we would have ZERO iatrogenic disease. But although we would have many fewer deaths from iatrogenic disease, zero in this scenario, we would have many NEW deaths happening as a result of no one who is sick ever being hospitalized or treated medically."

So the effect of (E) is merely to say, "Hey, author, you'll NEVER completely get rid of the risk of iatrogenic disease."

So what?

That's like telling me, "Hey, Patrick, we're NEVER going to be able to find life in another galaxy."

Okay, I didn't say we were. I just said that IF we did, people would be excited. You can only disagree with me by saying that finding life in another galaxy would NOT interest people.

You can only disagree with this author by saying that a world without ANY iatrogenic disease would NOT be a world with half the death rate.

Hope this helps.

If say for example that in this argument that it was not a conditional and instead it offered a new premise like "However, doctors have found a way to eliminate iatrogenic diseases through much better training where there are no more careless mistakes, the root cause of all iatrogenic disease". Then it concluded "Thus # of deaths would fall by 50% Would Answer Choice "E" work because in this case "E" would be directly challenging a premise that is stated ; "D" would also be a direct attack on the premise?
Originally, both "E" and "D" were merely attacking the sufficient condition in the conclusion so we could rule it as irrelevant as that is not what the author is directly stating but now the author is telling us it is possible.

I think if I had toned down the new premise and just said "Iatrogenic diseases is on a decreasing trajectory thanks to better doctor training; therefore the # of deaths will fall by 50% " then "D" and "E" would for sure work as flaws because it is saying even though you can reduce the # of deaths it will never be 0 or for all cases; perhaps the reduction is just in 1% of the cases and hence we do not expect the # of deaths to fall by that much. Importantly, perhaps these 1% of the deaths were deaths that may have occured anyways even without the treatment(the original gap in reasoning) , which further weakens the argument.

[ohthatpatrick]

They would both be answers that move in a Weaken direction ever so slightly, but neither one would be a powerful Weaken idea.

"Doctors have greatly improved preventing iatrogenic disease" is totally compatible with "It's impossible to prevent all cases" and compatible with "noniatrogenic diseases always create at least some risk of iatrogenic disease".