LSAT 158 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q9

LR Question 9 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Consumer advocate: Even relatively minor drug-related interactions…

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: Drug companies should be required to notify consumers of all known drug-related interactions.

REASONING: Minor interactions between drugs and other substances can be harmful. For example, people who take aspirin with fruit juice are harmed because the aspirin is ineffective.

ANALYSIS: The author’s argument is that it causes more harm to not inform consumers of all interactions. To weaken this argument, we need to show that it is more harmful to require the drug companies to inform consumers of the interactions.

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1. CORRECT. If a patient pays attention to a minor interaction like the aspirin/fruit juice example, and it causes them to ignore a more serious issue, it would certainly cause harm. In this scenario, it’s better to not overload the patient and make sure they understand the most important interactions.
2. This doesn’t change the fact that informing consumers of these interactions would reduce harm. In fact, if this is true, then the requirement wouldn’t change much because there aren’t many interactions to notify consumers about.
3. This helps the argument. Negligible price increase means less arguments against notifying consumers.
4. This doesn’t matter. Companies under the author’s proposition are only required to report known interactions, so unidentified interactions are irrelevant.
5. This shows that patients will understand the warnings. It isn’t an argument against the warnings.

Recap: The question begins with “Consumer advocate: Even relatively minor drug-related interactions”. It is a Weaken question. Learn how to master LSAT Weaken questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.