Many lives might be saved if inoculations against cow flu were routinely administered to all people in areas where disease is detected. However, there is a small possibility that a person will die as a result of inoculations; we cannot permit inoculations

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Many lives might be saved if inoculations against cow flu were routinely administered to all people in areas where disease is detected. However, there is a small possibility that a person will die as a result of inoculations; we cannot permit inoculations against cow flu to be routinely administered.
Write a response in which you discuss what evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and how the evidence will weaken or strengthen the argument.

The given argument talks about the Cow flu disease. It states that the disease claims various lives even though an inoculation or a vaccination is available against it. But it states that the vaccination is not administered due to fear of causing death rather than curing the patients. There are a few flaws in this argument which if had been eliminated, made it a strong argument.

The argument states that the Cow flu disease claims various lives. However it does not imply the number of people dying actually because of cow flu. A cow flu patient may die even because of any other disease from which he simultaneously suffers from. Hence, had it supported the argument with statislics like the percentage of people dying from only cow flu in an area, it would have strenghthened the argument.

The argument also states that If the inoculation is administered, the life of the patient might have been saved. However, apart from mentioning about the rare chance of death of the patient, it doesn't state what are the chances of a person's life being saved due to the inoculation. It doesn't confirm that the person will be saved had he been initially administered the inoculation.

The argument mentions that the inoculation at rare cases may cause the death of the patient. But it does not support its argument by stating whether the chances of losing lives because of inoculations are higher than the chances of the disease claiming the lives of people. Had they said that the inoculation administered caused more deaths than the disease caused, it would have strengthened its argument.

The argument fails to elucidate how the disease is spreading. If it tries to reason that he inoculation was not administered because the patient has a small chance of losing his life, it also does not mention what other measures could have initially prevented the contraction of the disease, so that no person would have lost his life.Had it explained the measures that were taken to prevent the spreading disease, and yet there have been many deaths owing to the disease in absence of the inoculation being administered, the argument would have been substantially strengthened.

Thus, on the basis of the loopholes observed in the argument like Statistics of death due to the disease, chances of death due to the inoculations, and the other preventive measures it can be said that the argument is flawed and had it supported with these evidences it would have been strengthened.

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2014-07-24 ana-mika 60 view
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Comments

argument 1 -- OK.

argument 2 -- OK.

Better: What are the relative numbers between people who are saved versus people who die from the vaccination? How small is the possibility of death? If the possibility of death is less than 0.1%, then the benefit of saving many lives from the disease far outweighs the chance of death.

argument 3 -- not OK.

Suggested: the author neglects to mention how the flu is spread among the people. Can the disease be passed via air? How quickly do people show symptoms from the disease? A flu that spreads rapidly with symptoms that manifest slowly can be dangerous for society

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 419 350
No. of Characters: 2016 1500
No. of Different Words: 163 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.524 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.811 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.702 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 131 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 104 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 66 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.278 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 18.11 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.611 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.389 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.619 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.174 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5

Thank you so much, your reviews on not only this essay but all the previous too, has helped me a lot.
I had a query, is it fine to ask questions in an argument essay while describing one of your arguments? like those you have used in the suggestion : Can the disease be passed via air? How quickly do people show symptoms from the disease? Is is this fine? or should we simple convert such questions into assertions that is- The disease may have spread via air. I would appreciate if this query is answered.