hashash1n1 wrote:
Here's what I don't understand with this question - the question clearly states that countries without patent law ALSO make life sustaining drugs. Looking at this, it doesn't make sense to me how pharmaceutical companies cannot afford it when countries without patent law are affording it at cheaper prices. This is why I chose C because it reliably weakens the argument, albeit not strongly. What am I missing here?
Should I instead just ignore these convoluted side-cases? I think at this point I've got 10-15+ wrong in CR simply because of overthinking the options and finding them contradictory. Maybe it's best to assume that any option by GMAC is NEVER contradictory.
Thanks
Posted from my mobile device
This is going to sound silly, but to answer this question accurately, you'll want to wrap your head around the
exact language in the passage and the answer choices. It's remarkably easy to skip over a key detail on this one.
The passage tells us that certain drugs are "sold at widely affordable prices" in countries that don't allow patents. Notice that to "sell" something is different than to "make" something, as you've written. We know that the drugs are
sold at lower prices in certain countries, but we have no idea how much it cost to
develop and manufacture the drugs -- both things that could fall under the category of "making" the drug.
Then answer choice (D) comes along, and tells us that the development of new drugs depends on high profits afforded by patents. In other words, even though drugs are
sold at lower prices in certain countries, those prices don't support the system to
develop new drugs.
This is a big problems for the author's conclusion, which states that " future access to
new life sustaining drugs can be improved" if we do away with patents.
In other words, sure --
selling drugs cheaply allows for greater access to those particular drugs. But what about new drugs? Well, to
develop these new drugs, companies need to have high profits from patents.
So, getting rid of patents would NOT improve future access to new life sustaining drugs.
(D) is the correct answer.
I hope that helps!
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