GRE— Argument 68：养狗能治疗心脏病吗？

　　【The short passage】：

　　68. A recent study reported that pet owners have longer, healthier lives on average than do people who own no pets. Specifically, dog owners tend to have a lower incidence of heart disease. In light of these findings, Sherwood Hospital should form a partnership with Sherwood Animal Shelter to institute an adopt-a-dog program. The program would encourage dog ownership for patients recovering from heart disease, which should reduce these patients' chance of experiencing continuing heart problems and also reduce their need for ongoing

　　treatment. As a further benefit, the publicity about the program would encourage more people to adopt pets from the shelter. And that will reduce the incidence of heart disease in the general population.

　　【The instruction】：

　　Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

　　【The sample answer】：

　　Sherwood Hospital is advised to cooperate with Sherwood Animal Shelter to initiate an adopt-a-dog program. This argument is supported by assuming dog-keeping is an effective remedy for heart disease. However, lacking persuasiveness, the assumptions put forward are unlikely to infer a convincing argument. Safer assumptions thus should be afforded before suggesting Sherwood Hospital form a partnership with Sherwood Animal Shelter (仔细体会before的使用).

　　The first assumption is that this program is effective in encouraging those patients recovering from heart diseases to own dogs, reduce continuing heart problems and need for ongoing treatment (与其进行蹩脚的同义转换，倒不如直接引用案例里的关键词).Dog owners are found to have lower incidence of heart disease. This infers dog-keeping serves as a precaution of heart disease rather than a remedy for it. Thus, patients recovering from heart disease might find it ineffective to cure their disease by keeping dogs (层层剥离，语言和逻辑的清晰度是的). Assuming dog owners tend to recover from heart disease more readily than those who do not keep dogs, it is suspicious keeping dogs are able to reduce continuing heart problems and ongoing treatment. After all, an irregular timetable, an imbalanced dietary or an excitable emotion, are prone to trigger discomfort of heart and make treatment feeble (后两处逻辑错误的分析部分可以合并使得信息紧凑，语流增速). The program, adopt-a-dog, should not be initiated accordingly.

　　The second assumption is that this program would encourage people to adopt pets from the shelter. It is unsafe to assume this as this program targets at adoption of dogs rather than pets (典型的偷换概念).Even though those people prioritize adopting dogs, they are unnecessarily able to do that if the communities they dwell release bans on keeping dogs or if they are allergic to dogs （即便有领养的意愿，也需要其他条件都具备）. For those who are capable of keeping dogs, adopt a dog from the shelter might not be their only choice. They might adopt one from their friends or they may take a homeless one home (领养狗的地方很多，不一定来这个收容所). Clearly, the flawed assumption fails to prove the argument is verifiable.

　　The third assumption is that the publicity of this program will reduce the incidence of heart disease among the general public. Suppose this program works in some groups of people, this does not necessarily apply to the general population. After all, multiple culprits could lead to heart diseases. A highly-stressful environment, long-term negative emotions or heredity-pertinent factors might lead to different types of them (典型的忽略其他变量). Besides, there might be inadequate number of citizens who participate in this program. As a result, even though this program is effective in reducing the incidence of heart disease, inadequate participants could not ensure the reduction of that ensues in overall population (从局部到整体不能直接划等号). The argument that this hospital should cooperate with the shelter is less likely to be advisable when it is based on a groundless assumption.

　　Conclusion

　　(略)

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