0910G[North America Flying] Argument65 by haunteagle

haunteagleUID: 2609432

TOPIC: ARGUMENT105 - The following appeared in a health newsletter.

"According to a recent study, people with many social ties report catching colds less often than do people with few social ties. Consequently, researchers conclude that having an active social life probably helps strengthen the immune system. The researchers note that catching a cold-one of a family of highly contagious viruses-gives the cold-sufferer temporary immunity to that virus in the future, but not to the many other related viruses. Merely being exposed to a new cold virus, however, is not enough for a person to catch a cold, since a strong immune system can successfully fight off some new viruses. Thus, in order to prevent catching a cold, people should strengthen their immune systems by becoming more active socially."
WORDS: 389
TIME: 00:30:00
DATE: 2009/7/19 21:13:15

The editor claims that social ties will make people's immune systems stronger and hence be healthier. The editor's argument is well-presented, yet I find some aspects of this argument are not convincing.

The editor fails to prove the inner relationship between catching cold and immune systems. As public consider, cold refers to a series of symptoms such as running nose, cough, and fever. Usually cold is caused by viral infection, TB or inflammation in breathing systems. However, the immune systems consist of every part of the body. People without cold can have cancer and AIDS which show a deterioration of immune system. Moreover, since we have already developed a whole evaluating standards to test whether our immune system works well or not, we can know the status of our immune systems quickly. To convince the readers, the editor should provide figures showing that people without cold tend to have a strong immune system.

Even cold can represent the status of immune system, the editor also weaken his argument by his assumption that we will contact with only one kind of virus, which is usually not the case. Participating social activities we will contact with many people and we do not the talent to predict how many sick people will participate in. Hence we cannot know whether we will develop immunity or catch a cold. To substantiate his claim, the editor should have a deep research to find out the average number of patient in social activities.

The editor's claim is unconvincing because he overly extent the research result that we will acquire of immunity to the virus we contact with to that we can strengthen our immune system to fight off new virus. Immunity to certain of virus does not necessarily indicate we can fight off new virus. A prompted example is that we cannot fight off the AIDS virus in the condition that we have already developed immunity to cold. The editor is required to supply convincing medical evidence that we can fight off new virus if we have immunity to some other kinds of virus.

In conclusion, the editor fails to prove that we will contact with only one kind of virus in social activities, hence we can develop immune systems to fight off new cold virus, and thus we will have a better immune system.