September 2009 LSAT Section 5 Question 9

Two months ago a major shipment of pythons arrived from Africa, resulting in a great number of inexpensive pythons in...

DesHarp on May 21 at 05:20AM

Confusing language.

The question stem mentions that they will die with 6 months of contracting the disease but the answer explanation says they are not born with the disease. So reasonably I understood that to mean that they could catch the disease some time after birth meaning that they would not necessarily die within 6 months if they do not immediately contract the disease. That is why I got the answer wrong because it said that they WILL die within 6 months.

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Emil-Kunkin on May 21 at 10:00PM

This is where we need to carefully tie the answer back to what the passage said. The passage said that many pythons hatched in Africa ARE AFFLICTED, and that a few hatched in North America HAVE THIS DISEASE. That is to say that they currently have the disease and thus are guaranteed to die within six months of writing. While you're right about those that may catch it in the future, the passage tells us that some of the snakes in question have the disease now.