October 1999 LSAT Section 1 Question 10

The symptoms of hepatitis A appear no earlier than 60 days after a person has been infected. In a test of a hepatiti...

medasmx@protonmail.com on December 21, 2021

dont understand D

couldnt the vaccinated peoples symptoms be side effects from the vaccine. where if it were in the placebo group the symptoms were from infection. to me unvaccinated would mean that they had hep a where vaccinated group could be side effects or infection.

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Jay-Etter on January 22, 2022

Assuming the vaccinated people's side effects were from the vaccine is a really big assumption to make because they haven't given us any reason to think that in the stimulus. We want to avoid making these kinds of large jumps in reasoning. However, they tell us that people in both groups eventually showed symptoms of hepatitis A. The most likely reason is that they actually had hepatitis. So how could the vaccinated people get hepatitis? Well we know that it takes at least 60 days for symptoms to show. Therefore, the vaccinated people who show symptoms of hepatitis must have gotten an infection before being vaccinated, otherwise they would have protection.

Back to your original point, if there was an answer option that said "the hepatitis A vaccine frequently causes some short-lived symptoms of actual hepatitis A", that could be a correct answer also! However, we don't want to just assume that on our own if it's not given to us.