Argument129 第18篇 让砖头来得更猛烈些吧！
------摘要------
作者：寄托家园作文版普通用户 共用时间：30分0秒 322 words
从2005年6月24日21时49分到2005年6月24日22时30分
------题目------
The following appeared in the Sherwood Times newspaper.
'A recent study reported that pet owners have longer, healthier lives on average than do people who own no pets. Specifically, dog owners tend to have a lower incidence of heart disease. In light of these findings, Sherwood Hospital should form a partnership with Sherwood Animal Shelter to institute an 'adopt-a-dog' program. The program would encourage dog ownership for patients recovering from heart disease, which will help reduce medical costs by reducing the number of these patients needing ongoing treatment. In addition, the publicity about the program will encourage more people to adopt pets from the shelter, which will reduce the risk of heart disease in the general population.'
提纲：
1、 健康生活与养宠物的关系并不一定是因果关系。
2、 心脏病康复的病人和一般的养宠物的人是有区别的。
3、 宣传不一定能使更多人去shelter领养宠物。
------正文------
This argument drew a conclusion of instituting an "adopt-a-dog" program only based on a study about the relation between health and pets ownership. It is fallacious in several points during the process of argumentation and thus the suggestion of "adopt- a-dog" program is unconvincing.
First of all, the author garbles a correlated relationship with a causal relationship. That is to say, the mere fact that pet owners have longer, healthier lives on average than to people who own no pets, does not mean that ownership of pets is the reason that people have longer and healthier lives. It is also the case in the relationship between dog ownership and lower incidence of heart disease. There are many factors that could affect and lead to health conditions and incidence of heart disease. But the author ignores them at all. In that the assumption is unwarranted, the inferring of the author is not sound.
Furthermore, the author assumes that dog ownership of patients recovering from heart disease would help reduce medical costs by reducing the number of them needing ongoing treatment. It is also questionable. First, patients covering from heart disease are different from those people who own dogs but do not suffer heart disease. Even if owning a dog is helpful for preventing the incidence of heart disease (which is not clear illustrated in the argument actually), it is still hard to infer that it will helpful to prevent the recurrence of heart disease and reduce the number of those patients needing ongoing treatment. Thus, it cannot help reduce medical costs either.
Finally, the assumption that the publicity of the program will encourage people to adopt pets from the shelter is also on no ground. People who adopt pets have their own reasons. Just learning the publicity of the program, it is probably hard to let them adopt pets from the shelter, let alone the credibility of the assertion in the publicity. Even they believe that pets ownership will be helpful for their health condition, they still have chances to choose from which place to adopt a pet, not necessarily from the shelter. And as pointed out in the former part, since whether there is a causal relationship between ownership of pets or dogs and the incidence of heart disease is doubtful, the conclusion that the publicity will at last reduce the risk of heart disease in the general population again lacks solid base.
In general, to make the suggestion of “adopt-a-dog” program more convincing, a more complete understanding of this issue should be made, including clarifying of the causal relationship between pets ownership and health, making clear the difference of people who do not have heart disease and patients recovering from heart disease, the effect of the publicity, etc.