A physician has a duty to see to the health and best medical interests

EXPLANATION FROM Fox LSAT

Okay, we have two conflicting rules here. First, the physician has a duty to see to the patient’s best medical interests. Second, the patient has a right to be fully informed about negative findings. Apparently, sometimes, these two conflict. Like, for example, maybe a physician thinks it would be better for the health of a patient not to tell the patient that there is an alien life form growing inside his belly, because that would drive the patient completely insane to the point of suicide. But the patient has a right to be fully informed. So the two rules are in conflict. Got it!

The argument continues by concluding that when the two rules conflict (as with the freakish alien growing inside the patient’s belly) the right to be informed should prevail. Why this conclusion? Well, because the right to be informed is a “basic right,” whatever the hell that means, and anything else would carry the risk of “treating the patient as an object.”

We’re asked to make the conclusion “follow logically,” which means “prove it.” It’s a Sufficient Assumption question. We can almost always predict the correct answer here, because all we need to do is take the evidence and connect it tightly to the desired conclusion. Here, there are a couple ways to do it. First, we could simply say, “Basic rights should always win in any conflict with a competing rule.” Or, we could say, “The risk of treating a patient as an object must be avoided at all costs.” If either of those is true, then the physician must disclose the alien growing in the belly.

A) No, it’s not about whether or not you have a right to reject a procedure. We need to force the physician to disclose the alien. That’s all we care about.

B) Huh? I suppose this might be necessary to the argument, but it’s not sufficient. We need sufficient information to force the physician to disclose the alien. This isn’t it.

C) Like B, this one just doesn't build the bridge we are looking for.

D) Yep. We predicted “Basic rights should win every conflict.” That’s pretty damn close to this answer. Since we know the right to know is a “basic right,” the physician would be forced to disclose the hideous creature growing in his patient’s belly, even if the patient would then immediately throw himself off the hospital roof. This is going to be our answer.

E) Nah. The conflict wasn’t between two rights; it was between a right and a duty. And anyway, “most other rights” wouldn’t be strong enough to prove that the basic right should beat another right.

Our answer is D, because it was perfect.