A new drug, taken twice daily for one month, is an effective treatment for a certain disease. The drug now...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
A new drug, taken twice daily for one month, is an effective treatment for a certain disease. The drug now most commonly prescribed for the disease occasionally has serious side effects such as seizures; the new drug has side effects much more frequently, but the worst of them is mild nausea. Therefore, the new drug is clearly preferable as a treatment.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| A new drug, taken twice daily for one month, is an effective treatment for a certain disease. |
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| The drug now most commonly prescribed for the disease occasionally has serious side effects such as seizures; the new drug has side effects much more frequently, but the worst of them is mild nausea. |
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| Therefore, the new drug is clearly preferable as a treatment. |
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Argument Flow:
The argument starts by establishing that the new drug is effective, then compares side effects between the current and new drugs, and concludes that the new drug is better because mild frequent side effects are preferable to rare serious ones.
Main Conclusion:
The new drug is clearly preferable as a treatment for the disease.
Logical Structure:
The author uses a trade-off analysis - weighing the severity versus frequency of side effects - to conclude that frequent mild side effects (new drug) are better than occasional serious side effects (current drug). The logic assumes that avoiding serious complications outweighs dealing with more frequent but minor discomfort.
Prethinking:
Question type:
Weaken - We need to find information that reduces our belief in the conclusion that the new drug is clearly preferable
Precision of Claims
The argument makes specific claims about effectiveness (new drug works), frequency (new drug has side effects more frequently), and severity (current drug has serious side effects like seizures, new drug has mild side effects like nausea)
Strategy
To weaken this argument, we need to find information that challenges the logic that frequent mild side effects are better than rare serious side effects. We can do this by introducing factors that make the new drug less preferable despite its milder side effects, or by showing that the comparison isn't as straightforward as presented
This suggests the current drug might have additional unknown side effects. However, this doesn't weaken the argument about the new drug being preferable. If anything, discovering more problems with the current drug would strengthen the case for the new drug. This choice doesn't address the core comparison being made.
This directly attacks the argument's foundation. The argument assumes that frequent mild side effects are acceptable because they're not serious. But if patients experiencing nausea stop taking the new drug before completing the one-month treatment course, then the drug's effectiveness becomes irrelevant. We can't call a drug 'clearly preferable' if patients won't actually complete the treatment due to the side effects. This seriously undermines the conclusion.
This provides background information about other drugs but doesn't affect the comparison between the current drug and the new drug. The argument is specifically comparing these two drugs, so information about when other drugs are prescribed is irrelevant to determining which of these two is preferable.
This talks about re-infection rates after successful treatment, but this applies equally to both drugs since both are described as effective treatments. This doesn't help us determine which drug is more preferable and doesn't weaken the argument's reasoning about side effect trade-offs.
This actually strengthens the argument for the new drug rather than weakening it. If there's a way to prevent the nausea (the main side effect of the new drug), this makes the new drug even more attractive compared to the current drug with its serious side effects like seizures.