Ethicist: In general it is wrong to use medical treatments and

Question

Ethicist: In general it is wrong to use medical treatments and procedures of an experimental nature without the patient's consent, because the patient has a right to reject or accept a treatment on the basis of full information about all the available options. But knowledge of the best treatment for emergency conditions can be gained only if consent to experimental practices is sometimes bypassed in medical emergencies. So some restricted nonconsensual medical research should be allowed.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the ethicist's argument?

(A) Doctors often do not know what is best for their own patients in emergency situations.

(B) If patients knew that experimental treatments were being used in medical emergencies, it could adversely affect the outcome of that research.

(C) Nonconsensual medical research should be allowed only if the research is highly likely to yield results that will benefit the patient.

(D) In cases where the best treatment option is unknown, a patient ceases to have the right to know the treatment plan and the alternatives.

(E) The right of patients to informed consent is outweighed in at least some medical emergencies by the possible benefits of research conducted without their consent.

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Official Answer

E

jko · Answer

(1) in general it is wrong to use experimental medical treatments/procedures w/out patient's consent.
(2) knowledge of best treatment for mergency conditions can be gained only if consent to experimental procedures is bypassed in medical emergencies.

conclusion - some nonconsensual medical research should be allowed.

(A) is implied. in (2) it is implied that the doctors dont already know the best treatment. this is basically a restatement of one of the premises, not an assumption.

(B) this is not claimed. and it is not required to reach the conclusion.

(C) this is not claimed. the argument is saying that consent should be bypassed so that more information can be gained regarding best course of action in emergencies.

(D) mis-stating the overall argument. the argument is about in cases that are emergencies, not cases that the best treatment option is unknown.

(E) correct, in taking (1) and (2) and reaching the conclusion, it's indicating that gaining knowledge is more important in certain situations.

raghavakumar85 · Answer

A, B and C are irrelevant. They aren't assumptions.

D talks about unknown treatments - out of scope

E is the answer.

Temurkhon · Answer

was tempted by C but assumption is

To get knowledge of the best treatment, some restricted nonconsensual studies should be allowed

it is different from C

Kanika3agg · Answer

Pre -thinking - Conclusion - Non-consensual research should be allowed.
Argument 1 - In emergency situation, the knowledge of best treatments can be gained if consent is bypassed.

Assumption - Gaining knowledge of the method is more important than having a consent in some situations

A) negating first statement - Doctors may know what is important for their patients - It doesnt shatter the conclusion.
B) negating this statement - If pateints 
C) Only word implies that other cases of non-consensual research shouldnt be allowed which may not be true. 
D) Extreme option
E) Negating this statement - Gaining knowledge is not important than consent. Then, non- consensual research should never be allowed. This is a required assumption.

Please let me know if this is alright!

sssanskaar · Answer

Let's tackle option B.

The passage states that if the patients knew about the experimental nature of the treatments, they could have accepted or rejected the treatment, not that their exposure to this information would have corrupted the experimental data in any sort of way.

It's a very fine line of distinction but we have to be extremely literal when we are solving CR questions

Only option E captures the essence of the argument completely.

abhola · Answer

Hi guys! Hope y'all are doing well.

Very interesting question with lots of layers of logic. So pay more emphasis on understanding passages and understanding the role of each statement and how each statement connects with others. Let's be methodological and solve this question step by step.

I am going to  start with reading the question stem  first because the passage is long and I want to orient myself before I want to dive in deep. The question asks us to find an assumption that is necessary for the argument to stand.

The strategy should be to find an answer choice that: 
1 - is a MUST BE TRUE for the argument to hold.
2 - presents a NEW piece of information.

Understand the passage:

Statement 1 sets the context. It means patients have a right to say yes or no to a procedure that is experimental in nature. It is WRONG to proceed without CONSENT.
Statement 2 is evidence of the author's conclusion. This statement says: in medical emergencies, the knowledge of what is best comes from the experimentation and that experimentation can ONLY happen if you bypass the CONSENT. Here knowledge of best in my opinion means knowledge of what works and what does not.
Statement 3 is the conclusion. Hence we should allow some restricted NONCONSENSUAL medical research.

Let us know connect and simplify the argument:

All in all the passage says some restricted NONCONSENSUAL medical research should be allowed because it is necessary to gain knowledge that could help determine the best course of treatment in medical emergencies.

This is the most important step of analyzing any CR argument IMO.

Let us think a bit about what could be possible assumptions:

Why one should not allow the restricted NONCONSENSUAL medical research given that it is necessary to gain knowledge that could help determine the best course of treatment in medical emergencies?

The knowledge gained from such medical research cannot be gained through other options. If knowledge could be gained from the other sources, should one then even need to break the rules?

So the assumption is  knowledge gained from such research is better (marginally or significantly; does not matter) than the knowledge gained from the other sources.

I was not able to pre-think many assumptions here since my thinking is not that broad. If I were in the exam, I would still be confident moving to answer choices because my understanding is sufficient. Now let us evaluate the answer choices.

Focus on eliminating the definitely wrong ones.

Choice A: 
Let us understand what this means. If doctors often do not know what is best for their patients, does it necessarily warrant the need for NONCONSENSUAL medical research? What if for a given patient in a medical emergency a doctor lacks some experience which he can gain by discussing with other doctors. But still, negate this and see if the conclusion breaks.
Doctors often know what is best for their patients in emergency situations. Again this does mean we should not encourage the NONCONSENSUAL medical research? No.  Choice A is not a must be true. This definitely strengthens the conclsuion.

Choice B: 
This is tempting. This choice says if patients know that experimental research is being carried out, then results are adversely affected.
Please note the focus of the conclusion and passage is CONSENT vs NON-CONSENT.
What this choice implies is that if patients know that they are under experimental research (most likely they have CONSENTED), then the results of the research are flawed. This choice DOES NOT guarantee that if they do not know they are under such research (most likely NON-CONSENSUAL), then the results are not flawed.
 Basically, If A then B, does not mean If not A then not B. Hence do not over-infer from this choice.

Choice C:
This is not a MUST BE TRUE. Let us negate.
Even if the research does not yield the results that benefit the patients, doctors would still be equipped with a piece of information that will prevent them from using this treatment in future cases. This is eventually useful.  Negation supports the conclusion.

Choice D:
This is out of scope, it talks about what happens when treatment is unknown. We are focused on finding the (best) treatments when they are unknown.
 
Choice E:
This implies that NON-CONSENSUAL is sometimes better than CONSENSUAL research. And this is the missing piece we are looking for.
Let us negate this NON-CONSENSUAL is NEVER better than CONSENSUAL research. This breaks the conclusion.

kanikaa9 · Answer

Negation of E - "The right of patients to informed consent is  never  outweighed in medical emergencies by the possible benefits of research conducted without their consent"

This totally wrecks the argument. Hence the ans.

guddo · Answer

Ethicist: In general it is wrong to use medical treatments and procedures of an experimental nature without the patient's consent, because the patient has a right to reject or accept a treatment on the basis of full information about all the available options. But knowledge of the best treatment for emergency conditions can be gained only if consent to experimental practices is sometimes bypassed in medical emergencies. So some restricted nonconsensual medical research should be allowed.
 
 Which one of the following is an assumption required by the ethicist's argument?

The ethicist accepts that informed consent is generally required, but argues that in some emergency research cases consent may be bypassed.  The argument therefore assumes  that the patient’s right to informed consent can sometimes be overridden by the possible benefits of  emergency medical research .

(A) Doctors often do not know what is best for their own patients in emergency situations.

This is not required. The argument is about gaining general knowledge of the best treatments, not about whether doctors often fail to know what is best for individual patients.

(B) If patients knew that experimental treatments were being used in medical emergencies, it could adversely affect the outcome of that research.

This is not required. The reason consent is bypassed is that emergency conditions may make consent impossible or impractical, not that patient knowledge would distort the research.

(C) Nonconsensual medical research should be allowed only if the research is highly likely to yield results that will benefit the patient.

This is too strong. The argument supports some restricted nonconsensual research because of possible broader knowledge, not only when the patient is highly likely to benefit.

(D) In cases where the best treatment option is unknown, a patient ceases to have the right to know the treatment plan and the alternatives.

This is too extreme. The ethicist does not assume the right disappears; the argument assumes it can be outweighed in some emergency cases.

(E) The right of patients to informed consent is outweighed in at least some medical emergencies by the possible benefits of research conducted without their consent.

This is correct. Without this assumption, the fact that useful knowledge can be gained from bypassing consent would not justify allowing nonconsensual research.

Answer: (E)

Ethicist: In general it is wrong to use medical treatments and

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Ethicist: In general it is wrong to use medical treatments and

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