Argument 68 范文

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Argument 68
Arg 68adopt-a-dog program

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 should reduce these patients' chance of experiencing continuing heart problems and also reduce their need for ongoing treatment. As a further benefit, the publicity about the program would encourage more people to adopt pets from the shelter. And that will reduce the incidence of heart disease in the general population.

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.


G1: 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.


C1: In light of these findings, Sherwood Hospital should form a partnership with Sherwood Animal Shelter to institute an adopt-a-dog program.


G2: The program would encourage dog ownership for patients recovering from heart disease,


C2: which should reduce these patients' chance of experiencing continuing heart problems and also reduce their need for ongoing treatment.


G3: As a further benefit, the publicity about the program would encourage more people to adopt pets from the shelter.


C3: And that will reduce the incidence of heart disease in the general population.


A1(G1): dog ownership is the main reason why dog owners have a lower incidence of heart disease.

A2(G2): dog ownership could help the patients and reduce the need for treatment

A3(G3): The program would be successful and the publicity about the program would necessarily be positive

A4(G3, C3): The incidence of heart disease in the general population could be reduced if more people adopt pets.


The author argues that the hospital should introduce the program to promote dog ownership among pateints with heart disease and the general public based on the study suggesting that pet owners tend to live long and healthy lives. A number of assumptions have been made about the effects of dog ownership in general, the consequences of adopting dogs by patients as well as how the public would respond to the program. We need to examine such assumptions critically to decide if the argument is acceptable.

To begin with, it is assumed that dog ownership necessarily helped the people to enjoy longer and healthier lives. The study merely suggested that dog ownership is correlated with healthy and longer lives. But correlation does not necessarily imply causal relationship. Maybe pet owners (dog owners in particular) tend to have higher income and enjoy more leisure time, which mean that they will have access to better health care, healthier food and health-related amenities such as gyms. If this is the case, dog ownership is not the main reason why the dog owners enjoy better health. Promoting dog ownership would not achieve the proposed goals.

In additon, it is assumed that the patients would necessarily benefit from such a program. For one thing, we do not know if the patients would be interested in owning a dog. Maybe some of them are afraid of dogs or had unpleasant experiences with dogs in the past. For such patients, the program would not work. In addition, we do not know if the patients who join the program would get any health benefits from it. The study cited is concerned with dog owners who have lower chance of having heart disease. It does not focus on people who are recovering from the condition. Maybe the patients recovering from heart condition need more rest and would not benefit from rigourous activities such as walking a dog regularly. Also it is hard to believe the assumption that the program would make the ongoing treatment unnecessary. The health professionals will have to be consulted over this matter.

The author also predicts that with more publicity about the program the shelter would attract more people from the general public to adopt pets. But the assumption here is that the program would be successful and the paritcipants would say nice things about the program. Based on the discussion above, it is far from clear that the program would actually benefit the patients. If the patients do not find the program helpful, it would be unreasonable to expect them to promote the program and the media would be critical of the program. If the publicity is negative, the shelter would not be able to have more people to adopt pets there.



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