TOPIC: ARGUMENT188 - A new report suggests that men and women experience pain very differently from one another, and that doctors should consider these differences when prescribing pain medications. When researchers administered the same dosage of kappa opioids-a painkiller-to 28 men and 20 women who were having their wisdom teeth extracted, the women reported feeling much less pain than the men, and the easing of pain lasted considerably longer in women. This research suggests that kappa opioids should be prescribed for women whenever pain medication is required, whereas men should be given other kinds of pain medication. In addition, researchers should reevaluate the effects of all medications on men versus women.
WORDS: 326
TIME: 00:30:00
DATE: 2010-7-14 19:04:35
The argument is about using medicines and the writer suggests that kappa opidids(KO) should be prescribed for women not men, and he also consider the effects of all medications should be reevaluated on men versus women. The study is the only evidence that the writer cites to sustain his point, and this evidence is too weak to make his point convincing.
At first glance, the study seems reasonable, because In the study, researches use the equal-amount principle, that is using same dosage of same painkiller on men and women. But researchers ignore an important part: the results of this study are reports from these patients. In other words, it is the patients who report these results, not researchers collect results in a scientific way. This may have lead errors because there are no exactly standards to describe pains. Perhaps, these women thought they felt less painful, but in fact they felt more pain than men, it is men who express their pain exaggeratedly
Moreover, the writer cites just one features of KO - the function of killing pain, he does not give us any information about other features of this medicine, such as price, byproduct and so on. Notice that when doctors prescribe medicines, they not only pay attention to effects of medicine, he also consider some other features of them.
Even the result of the study is warranted, this result cannot lead to the conclusion that effects of all medicines should be revaluated. Maybe KO is just a exception that the effects on men and women are so various. The writer should cite more instances that some other medicines have different effects on different genders. After that we can draw this conclusion.
To sum up, this argument is not convincing. The main reason of this is the study which the writer cites is full of faults. Not only is the method to collect data wrong, but also misleading to test some other feature of medicines.作者: Jonathanmm 时间: 2010-7-14 21:39:44