We are told by the philosopher that effective tests have recently been developed that can predict fatal diseases having a largely genetic basis. So, for the first time, people can be warned well in advance of the possibility of such life-threatening conditions. But, we are told that medicine has not yet been able to cure these diseases.
So, essentially, all these tests do is inform people that they will get a disease that is both fatal and incurable. This information can actually be quite harmful to some people. This then raises the question of whether such tests should be available to people at all.
Thus, even though the tests accurately predict whether one will get a fatal disease, since the diseases are currently not curable, a moral question comes in to play of whether these tests should be administered at all since they seem to only upset those who have fatal and incurable diseases.
Answer choice (B) best illustrates this: "The advance of medicine creates new contexts in which ethical dilemmas can arise."
The new tests, i.e. "the advance of medicine," brought about questions of morality on whether these tests should be made available due to their possibly upsetting nature, i.e. "creates new contexts in which ethical dilemmas can arise."
Hope that was helpful! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
erica-scottSeptember 5, 2020
I was hesitant about picking "B" because it talked about the advance of "medicine" and the stimulus talked about the "advance of technologies" and also stated "medicine is not yet able to prevent most conditions".
In many lessons we are taught that the LSAT is very particular in its words -- when can you overlook particular phrases and when can you not?
AndrewJanuary 29, 2021
I had the same question, but I think that the reason why we can overlook "advance of medicine" is because this is an Illustration question, not a Must Be True question. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in Illustration questions, only the key idea has to match.
