A director of the Rexx pharmaceutical Company argued that the development costs for new vaccines that the health depa...

Skylar on January 14, 2020

@baahmed7860, happy to help.

We are asked to choose the answer that weakens the company director's claim - that vaccine sales are likely to be lower than medicine sales because vaccines are only administered once whereas medicine is administered multiple times.

(B) states that "many of the diseases that vaccines are designed to prevent can be successfully treated by medicine." This is largely irrelevant to the claim in question and, if anything, could be seen as support for the director's claim by showing that medicine is effective, which would mean that its sales may be high. (B) does not say anything about the effectiveness of vaccines. Since it does not weaken the claim in question, it is incorrect.

(A) states that "vaccines are administered to many more people than are most other pharmaceutical products." To understand this, let's imagine a scenario in which 500 people get a vaccine, and only 100 people take medicine. Even if the vaccine is administered once per person while the medicine is administered four times per person, there would be 500 vaccine sales and 400 medicine sales. This weakens/departs from the director's claim that vaccine sales are likely to be lower than medicine sales and is therefore correct.

Does that make sense? Please let us know if you have any other questions!