In countries in which new life-sustaining drugs cannot be patented, such drugs are sold at widely affordable
prices; those same drugs, where patented, command premium prices because the patents shield patent-holding
manufacturers from competitors. These facts show that future access to new life-sustaining drugs can be
improved if the practice of granting patents on newly developed life-sustaining drugs were to be abolished
everywhere. Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
A. In countries in which life-sustaining drugs cannot be patented, their manufacture is nevertheless a profitable
enterprise.
B. Countries that do not currently grant patents on life-sustaining drugs are, for the most part, countries with large
populations.
C. In some countries specific processes for the manufacture of pharmaceutical drugs can be patented even in
cases in which the drugs themselves cannot be patented.
D. Pharmaceutical companies can afford the research that goes into the development of new drugs only if patents
allow them to earn high profits.
E. Countries that grant patents on life-sustaining drugs almost always ban their importation from countries that do
not grant such patents.

OA is D.

I could not understand why C is wrong and why D is the answer.
My reasoning: if "SOME" countries can patent the process but not the drug itself, it may still not lead to improved access to life saving drugs. This I thought especially because the conclusion talks about abolishing the patents on these drugs "EVERYWHERE".

Is my line of thought correct? and could you explain both C and D options?

-Hitesh

Hi Ron/Stacey/Tim,

Could you please help me with the above problem? I am still not able to figure that out. Help needed badly!

Thanks,
Hitesh

don't do this -- i.e., DO NOT post a message that says "please answer my question".
this is called "bumping" the thread; it brings the thread up to the most recent position in the folder.

the problem, of course, is that we answer the posts strictly in order from oldest to newest. therefore, if you post a message, with no content, that says "please answer this post", then you are moving the thread to the LAST place in the queue.

please be patient -- we will get to all of the threads. if you make posts like this one, you're just making yourself wait longer.

thanks.

this is one of the few problems on which you have to take into account which answer most seriously weakens the argument. (in most weakening questions, there will be one answer choice that weakens the argument and four that are simply irrelevant.)

choice (d) more or less completely destroys the argument, because it says that pharmaceutical companies, in general, cannot afford to develop new drugs without patents.
if the statement in that choice is true, then abolishing patents will put a stop to the development of new drugs -- thus reducing access to those drugs to zero.

choice (c) is somewhat damaging to the argument, but nowhere near as damaging as choice (d). first of all, that choice talks only about some countries, while choice (d) talks about pharmaceutical companies across the board.
second, that choice is limited to manufacturing processes, not actual drugs -- so it requires an additional assumption that companies won't be able to invent alternative manufacturing processes for the same compounds. choice (d), on the other hand, requires no additional assumptions; it explicitly states that development of the drugs cannot continue without patents.

Sorry for that bumping. I will take care of this next time.




Thanks for the reply.


but in choice D, isn't this assumption necessary that if the drug is sold at affordable price then the volume of the sales cannot be so high as to return higher profits than if the drug is sold at premium price but less in volume.

if yes then how do determine which one of the two is more weakening?

Thank you Ron,

For a CR problem, I want you to detail your thought process step by step, so that I can learn the mode of attack from you. pls, detail.

the argument is ultimately about the effect of patents, not just about dollars and cents.

choice (d) says "only if patents allow xxxxx" -- meaning that, without patents, the companies won't earn high enough profits to make things work.

unfortunately, that's not possible -- read the last paragraph that i wrote to you here:
post61867.html#p61867

Thank you Ron.

sure thing