LSAT 111 – Section 4 – Question 15

Sign up to star your favorites LSAT 111 - Section 4 - Question 15

October 2001

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Request new explanation

Target time: 1:12

This is question data from the 7Sage LSAT Scorer. You can score your LSATs, track your results, and analyze your performance with pretty charts and vital statistics - all with a Free Account ← sign up in less than 10 seconds


J.Y.’s explanation

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Geneticist: Ethicists have fears, many of them reasonable, about the prospect of cloning human beings, that is, producing exact genetic duplicates. But the horror-movie image of a wealthy person creating an army of exact duplicates is completely unrealistic. Clones must be raised and educated, a long-term process that could never produce adults identical to the original in terms of outlook, personality, or goals. More realistic is the possibility that wealthy individuals might use clones as living “organ banks.”

Summarize Argument: Counter-Position
The geneticist concludes that the “horror-movie image” of human cloning producing an army of duplicates for wealthy people is an unrealistic fear. To support this, she says that the long-term process of raising and educating clones would mean that adults produced by cloning would not have identical goals, outlook, or personality, so an “army of exact duplicates” could not be produced. Then, the geneticist raises another, more realistic, outcome: using clones as living “organ banks.”

Identify Argument Part
The claim in the question stem gives a reason that the fear of cloning producing an army of duplicates is an unrealistic fear.

A
It is a reason for dismissing the various fears raised by ethicists regarding the cloning of human beings.
The claim in the question stem is targeted specifically toward the fear of using cloning to create an army of duplicates, not the “various fears” of ethicists. Further, the argument does not dismiss “various fears,” just one specific fear.
B
It is evidence that genetic clones will never be produced successfully.
The argument does not claim that genetic duplicates will never be produced successfully; it just says that an army of exact duplicates is an unrealistic fear due to differences in outlook, personality, or goals.
C
It illustrates the claim that only wealthy people would be able to have genetic duplicates made of themselves.
The argument does not claim that only wealthy people would have this ability; rather, the argument just raises the possibility that wealthy people would do so.
D
It is evidence for the claim that wealthy people might use genetic duplicates of themselves as sources of compatible organs for transplantation.
The claim in the question stem is used to reject one possible fear, not as evidence to support another potential risk of human cloning.
E
It is a reason for discounting one possible fear concerning the cloning of human beings.
The claim in the question stem is a premise that supports the conclusion, which is that one possible fear of human cloning is unrealistic. The referenced text gives a reason to discount one possible fear, so this is the correct answer.

Take PrepTest

Loading

Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 111 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

Get full LSAT course

Leave a Reply