arg129,诚请拍砖

若冰释UID: 2552405

TOPIC: ARGUMENT129 - 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."
WORDS: 408 TIME: 00:30:00 DATE: 2009-3-14 20:22:53
The author offers a proposal for a new "adopt-a-dog" program, which seems attempting by citing a recent study and analyzing logically. However, after a scrutiny reexamination of this argument, I find it unpersuasive as it stands.
Firstly, it might be possible that the respondents in this study had adopted a certain kind of pet for a long time, namely, several decades. The long mutual relationship may contribute a lot to the health of those pet owners, through the way of dog walking, feeding them food, or giving the pets a bath, and so forth. But it does not necessarily indicate that those patients who have heart disease will benefit as soon as they begin to keep pets, especially when one considers that the aim and obligation of hospital is to cure a person accurately for a short time.
Secondly, this program would not definitely encourage dog ownership for patients recovering from heat disease; and, the author also ignores the harm it would bring about for high rate of dog keeping among the patients. As we all know, hospital is a place requires enough silence for creating a positive environment for the recovery of patients. If dogs are kept here and there, they may bark loudly or leave their hair everywhere, when their owners are lying in the beds for certain medical purpose and have no spare time to take care of them. Will taking care of those dogs be part of responsibility of the nurses? The author still gives no details over this.
Thirdly, the conclusion that the dog adopting will reduce the risk of heart disease in the general population sounds presumptuous and ridiculous to some. Risk of heart disease is a complex result determined by a myriad of factors: gene, habits, diet structure and so on. So the measure to publicity the benefit of pet keeping will not necessarily lead to a decreased rate of heart disease. In other words, if keeping dogs really works so effectively that it turns out to be urgent for us to do this, why are the society and government so stupid to invest such a large amount of money on scientific research to find out those effective medicines and therapy methods?
In sum, unless the author proves the strong relationship between pet keeping and low incidence of disease, and specifies the details of the program, I am far from being convinced that Sherwood Hospital has this necessity to carry out the program.