argument166

alickenUID: 2845947

TOPIC: ARGUMENT166 - The following appeared in a local newspaper.

"People should not be misled by the advertising competition between Coldex and Cold-Away, both popular over-the-counter cold medications that anyone can purchase without a doctor's prescription. Each brand is accusing the other of causing some well-known, unwanted side effect: Coldex is known to contribute to existing high blood pressure and Cold-Away is known to cause drowsiness. But the choice should be clear for most health-conscious people: Cold-Away has been on the market for much longer and is used by more hospitals than is Coldex. Clearly, Cold-Away is more effective."
WORDS: 328
TIME: 00:30:00
DATE: 2010-7-26 19:10:23

In the article, the writer draws the conclusion that Cold-Away is more effective between these two cold medicines. The writer cites that both medicines have side effect but Cold-Away has less side effect than the other because Cold-Away has been on the market longer than Coldex and the former is used by more hospitals. These evidences cannot support the writer's conclusion well.

First, effective and having side effect or not are two concepts. Whether medicines are effective or not is considering whether they can treat illness or not. In contrast, side effects are some bad effects for some patients. In other words, there is no correlation between side effect and propose functions.
Just take Coldex for instance, its side effect is high blood pressure but its function is to treat cold, even if it let some patients get high blood pressure when they have it to treat, if the cold is healed we can say that Coldex is effective. The flaw the writer makes here is put effective and side effect together, he considers if a medicine has effect, its propose functions are weak. As a matter of fact the truth is not the case.

Secondly, the writer believes that if the medicine have been on market longer and be used by more hospitals it will more effective. This believe is ungrounded especially in medicines. Image, if old medicine are good enough why the new one been researched and developed? It entirely possible that the old one has some heavy side effect or the effects are not satisfied by patients. Also, there's another possible reason that due to Coldex is a new medicine that many hospitals and doctors do not know about it. As a result, doctors prescribe the old one Cold-Away to parents.

In sum, the article has several flaws. The confusing of effective and side effects is most serious flaw. Besides, more hospitals use Cold-Away cannot support the writer's conclusion because some other possible reasons exist