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The following appeared in an article in a consumer-products magazine:
“Two of today’s best-selling brands of full-strength prescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid, AcidEase and Pepticaid, are now available in milder nonprescription forms. Doctors have written 76 million more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Pepticaid. So people who need an effective but milder nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid should choose Acid-Ease.”
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.
The argument states that people in need of effective nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid should choose Acid-ease over Pepticaid because doctors have prescribed 76 million more prescriptions for Acid-ease than for Pepticaid. However, there are several assumptions that either do not apply to this argument or are flawed. First of all just because these two brands are bestselling it doesn’t mean that they are most effective and even if they were most effective it wouldn’t guarantee effectiveness of milder forms of these medications . Also, fact that doctors have written more prescription for certain brand doesn’t mean that this brand is most effective or simply better than others.
The first issue to be addressed is weather effectiveness of bestselling prescription medications guarantees effectiveness of the milder forms of those medications. Medications are effective because of their formula and not because of their brand. So if these medications are effective it is because they have effective combination of chemical substances and not because of masterful branding. Clearly milder versions of those medications will have different ingredients or different concentration of same ingredients, which of course will affect effectiveness of the medication.
The argument also relies on the idea that since 76 million more prescriptions were written for one brand, that brand must be better than the other. In most of the cases doctors write prescriptions based not only effectiveness of the mediation. Many doctors have incentives from pharmaceutical companies to prescribe certain medications. Also while writing prescription doctors take such factors as price of the medication, side effects, and state of the patient into consideration . All of these factors contribute to disproportionality of the prescriptions.
Finally argument fails to consider other competitor nonprescription medications for the relief of excess stomach acid pain. Even if nonprescription of Acid-ease was better than Pepticaid it wouldn’t make it best option on the market. Usually there are generic medications on a market which are as effective but cheaper in most cases. So for customer to make final decision lot more information and analysis are required.
In conclusion this argument is flawed for the above mentioned reasons and therefore is unconvincing. Before any decision is made all these things must be considered and not simply the sales of full strength medications of those two brands. Without this information the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.