Self-study
Support The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates the introduction of new therapeutic agents into the marketplace. █████████████ ██ █████ █ ████████ ████ ██ █████████ ██████ ████ ██ ███ ██████ ███████ █████ ██ ██ █████ ██ ███ ████████ ███ ██████████ ████████ ███████████ ███ ██████ ██ ███ ████ ███████ ██ ███████ █████████ ███ ████████ ███████ ██ ███ ███████████ ███████ ██ ██ ███ ███████ ████ ███ ██████████████ ██ ██████████ ███ ████████ ██ ███ ███████████ ████ ███ ██████████ ██ ███ ████████████ ████ █████ ███ ████████ ███ █████████ ███ █████████ ████ █████████
Argument Summary
The stimulus makes the case that because the FDA regulates the entrance of therapies into the market, it plays a "critical role" in improving US healthcare. This is because, even though the FDA doesn't actually discover or test new therapeutic agents directly, it permits these agents to enter the marketplace — and it is only after therapies reach the market that they can help patients.
Notable Inferences
It's always useful to look for conditional logic on inference questions, since conditional logic lends itself to cleaner inferences. For this stimulus, we only have one conditional statement: only after therapies are transferred to the marketplace can they benefit patients. This translates to:
benefit patients → transfer to market
By the contrapositive: /transfer to market → /benefit patients
So from the contrapositive of this statement, we know that if a new therapy does not reach the market — if the FDA blocks it, for example — then it will not benefit patients.
22.
Which one of the following ██████████ ███ ██ ████████ ████ ███ ████████
a
The FDA is ███████████ ███ ████████ ████ ███ ███████████ █████ ████ ██ ████████ ██ ████ ██████████
Incorrect. The stimulus only tells us about the FDA's role in introducing new therapies to the marketplace. We aren't told anything about what the FDA does after these therapies hit the market. So (A) may or may not be true, but we can't infer it from the stimulus.
b
Before new therapeutic ██████ █████ ███ ███████████ ████ ██ ███ ████ █████████
Correct. By the contrapositive of the last sentence, we know that if a therapeutic agent is not transferred from the laboratory to the marketplace, it will not help patients. According to the stimulus, reaching the marketplace is a necessary condition for a therapy to help patients, so (B) is correct.
c
The research community ██ ███████████ ███ ███ ███████████ ████ ███████ ██████ ███ ███ ██████ ███ ███ ████
Incorrect. The stimulus never talks about an "excessively" long period for testing drugs. And though it is the research community that engages in the "long process" of testing, we don't know whose responsibility it is to set the duration of testing — the FDA could require a certain length of testing before it allows a therapeutic agent to hit the market. So we can't infer (C) from the stimulus.
d
The FDA should ████ ████ ███████ ████ ███████████ ██ ██████ ████ ███ ███████ ██ ███████████ ██████ ██ ███████████
Incorrect. The stimulus hasn't raised any concerns about the quality of therapeutic agents, and doesn't suggest any need for the FDA to work more closely with researchers.
e
If a new ███████ █████████ ███ ████ ███████████ ████ ███ ██████████ ██ ███ ████████████ ██ ████ ████ █████████
Incorrect. This answer choice says that being transferred to the marketplace is a sufficient condition for a therapy to help patients:
transfer to market → help patients
But the last sentence of the stimulus said that being transferred to the marketplace was a necessary condition for a therapy to help patients, not a sufficient one. So (E) commits a sufficiency/necessity confusion and cannot be inferred from the stimulus.