May 2020 LSAT Section 3 Question 24

Consumer advocate: Some agricultural crops are now being genetically engineered to produce important pharmaceuticals...

Jazzy on July 27, 2023

Strange wording?

I ended up choosing E, but I was strongly leaning to D in the beginning--it looked like an ideal answer to solve a worry by that "even the scenario proposed by the worry is true, the worry will be not". However, what really confused me (after reading Jing Jing's thorough answer in the other post too appreciatively) is that, the wording in D that "in ordinary crops of the same species." Does it only mean the drug will not show in the parts used for food in "the ordinary counterpart"? If so, it does seem to say that the drug won't show in the parts used for food in those genetically engineered plants, but only its ordinary counterparts (which seems obvious). Plus, according to the prompt, the pollen could MAKE ordinary plants to be drug-producing plants, so D, with this wording, seems to be unable to secure this worry. But at the same time, I kind of get the general meaning of D, and of course, I am aware that there is already the first part stating "In crops genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals". So, it looks like a paradox between meanings of "In crops genetically engineered" and "in ordinary crops of the same species." in the same sentence. Did I just grammatically read the sentence wrong?

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Emil-Kunkin on August 5, 2023

That does indeed mean that drugs will not be present in the food part of the normal crop. For abstract wording like this I like to imagine a concrete example. Let's say that they managed to make a new type of corn that has insulin in it. Now we have two types of corn, normal and insulin corn. The worry would've that somehow pollen from insulin corn would accidentally fertilize some normal corn, which would then lead farmers to accidentally plant some insulin corn, and that would then enter the food supply.

However, d tells us that in insulin corn, the insulin isn't actually present in the corn part of the plant, only other parts we don't eat like the roots or the stalk. If this were true, then even if farmers accidentally let some insulin corn into the food supply then there would be no risk of contamination.

All d is saying is that in insulin corn, the insulin doesn't grow in the kernels.