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Can you please assess this AWA Answer out of 6?

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Can you please assess this AWA Answer out of 6?

by ChessWriter » Mon Mar 12, 2012 9:05 am
Can you please analyse my response to the following AWA Question and rate it out of 6. I'd be grateful if you could suggest improvements.

This is the question:

ESSAY QUESTION:

The following appeared in a medical magazine:

"Art and music have long been understood to have therapeutic effects for individuals who suffer from either physical or mental illnesses. However, most doctors rarely recommend to patients some form of art or music therapy. Instead, doctors focus almost all of their attention on costly drug treatments and invasive procedures that carry serious risks and side-effects. By focusing on these expensive procedures rather than low-cost treatments such as art and music therapy, doctors are doing a disservice to their patients and contributing to the rising cost of health care in the United States."

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. Point out flaws in the argument's logic and analyze the argument's underlying assumptions. In addition, evaluate how supporting evidence is used and what evidence might counter the argument's conclusion. You may also discuss what additional evidence could be used to strengthen the argument or what changes would make the argument more logically sound.
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Source: — GMAT Essays (AWA) |
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by ChessWriter » Mon Mar 12, 2012 9:06 am
This is the passage I wrote in response to the above question:

In my view, the writer wrongly concludes "Doctors are doing a disservice to their patients and contributing to the rising cost of health care in the United States".

In reaching this conclusion, the writer made the following flawed assumptions
1. That most doctors have access to music and related resources for the treatment of patients.
2. That doctors have been trained to choose the appropriate type of art and music to help treat a patient
3. That such treatment is efficacious enough to replace, at least partly, the existing drug therapies
4. That alternative cheaper drug therapies cannot be found to replace the benefit a patient might be expected to draw from art or music therapy.

The evidence the author cites in support of his claims is questionable at best and fallacious at worst. While, art and music have been known to have therapeutic effects, the available research is rather vague and non-specific. Moreover, such research has been done using outdated methods. For example - We do not know what additional factors(such as GMAT, culture, language, ambience etc.) influence the effect of art and music.

Also, the author makes a rather vague generalisation by saying that "doctors focus almost all of their attention on costly drug treatments and invasive procedures". If the author wants invasive and harmful methods of treatment to be partly replaced by art and music, then he must cite additional evidence to show that the advanced stages of disease where such treatments are more likely to be used are also equally affected positively by art and musica based therapies.

Furthermore, the author has mentioned the negatives of the widely used existing therapies, he has failed to mention any possible negative effects that a patient might incur from using the alternatives that he suggests.

However, the above objections do not completely invalidate the points the author has raised, He does have a point that some part of a patient's drug load and costs could be reduced by using alternative therapy. But, before such therapy is promoted, it should be evaluated whether the costs, the side effects, or the invasiveness of currently used therapies can be reduced by replacing them with other methods apart from art and music. For example - I might assert that aromatherapy and acupuncture are better alternatives that art and music. In fact, acupuncture is taught and practiced in China on a very wide scale, and its positive and negative effects have both been documented in far more detail than the effects of art or music therapy.

To evaluate the suitability of using art or music related therapies, we must begin by assessing , the diseases in which these therapies show the most benefit; the cultural, socio-economic and demographic factors influencing the outcome of such therapy; the relative reduction in cost that can be acheived, the side effects if any. Only when this data is available can any precise guidelines be established to guide doctors in their use of art or music therapy.

A doctor always tries to act in the best interests of his patient. Therefore, we are expecting too much if we expect doctors to adopt art and music therapy without knowing its limits precisely. Doctors are further constrained by the fear of medico-legal issues that might arise from using any methods other than the ones already being used. Again, From the patient's point of view, the costs of treatment might actually rise if insurance companies refuse to pay for any music or art therapy a doctor advised him to take.

In my view, the author has derived all-encompassing, sweeping conclusions from a very limited of data that is available to him. Before all or most of the practical, medical, legal, economic and ethical questions regarding the question are answered, it will be wrong to suggest that doctors immediately adopt art and music therapy with the goal of replacing other therapies with art or music.
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by jenniferpass » Tue Apr 10, 2012 3:33 am
The above essay statement is correct.Many doctors interpret this idea.Go to more information about the topics.
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