Please Rate My Argument Essay


The Prompt

Many lives might be saved if inoculations against cow flu were routinely administered to all people in areas where the disease is detected. However, since there is a small possibility that a person will die as a result of the inoculations, we cannot permit inoculations against cow flu to be routinely administered.

Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.

My Response

The prompt presents the argument that while many lives might be saved if inoculations against the cow flu were regularly administered to all people in the areas where the disease is detected, it could not be done because there is a small possibility that a person might die due to inoculations. This is a completely senseless argument and there are many more evidences which are needed to be evaluated before coming to any conclusion. Listed below are the three major evidences which would be necessarily required before coming to any conclusion.

Firstly, there is no data/study/proof given to support the fact that the people who died, actually died because of the inoculations or due to other reasons. It might be possible that they can be suffering with some other disease also and died due to that instead of the diesease for which inoculation was given. The chance that they were suffering with some other biological problem, were taking medicines for that, and didn't tell the doctor about that. Then the inoculation given to them reacted with the existing medicine they were taking and caused complextions. If the above given evidences are evaluated and found true, they would seriously harm the argument of not routinely administrating the cow flu inoculation.

Furthermore, even if we were to say that the persons died purely because of the inoculations, the author of the prompt falsely claims that those inoculations because of which people have died and the inoculation against the cow flu are exactly the same. There is no evidence to prove that both of the inoculations are the same and there is a real possibilty that they might be very very different. If this assumption of author that all the inoculations are the same turns out to be false, the argument given by him/her stands no value.

Moreover, the count of the people who will be saved from cow flu vs the count of the people who will die as a result of inoculations has not been taken into considersation while making the decision to permit the inoculations against the cow flu to be routinely administered. If the success rate of the inoculations is way to high than the failure rate, then it would benifit the public in general.

Taking all the things in view, the argument as it stands now, is very weak. More evidence is needed to prove it, and even after that, many things have not been taken in consideration by the author of the argument. Only after all those evidences and taking some more things into consideration, can the argument be evaluated for it's strength.