Critical Reasoning

Ordinary mountain sickness, a common condition among mountain clumbers, and one from which most people can recover, is caused by the characteristic shortage of oxygen in the atmosphere at high altitudes. Cerebral edema, a rarer disruption of blood circulation in the brain that quickly becomes life-threatening if not correctly trated from its onset, can also be caused by a shortage of oxygen. Since the symptoms of cerebral edema resemle those of ordinary mountain sickness, cerebral edema is especially dangerous at high altitudes.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
A. The treatment for ordinary mountain sickness differs from the treatment for cerebral edema.
B. Cerebral edema can cause those who suffer from it to slip into coma within a few hours.
C. Unlike cerebral edema, ordinary mountain sickness involves no disruption of blood circulation in the brain.
D. Shortage of oxygen at extremely high altitude is likely to affect thinking processes and cause errors of judgement.
E. Most people who suffer from ordinary mountain sickness recover without any special treatment.

Should be A/E.

BTW, does LSAT questions help us much?

IMO C. What's the OA and explanation?

This one is kind of tough because you really have to be specific about the cause and effect relationship the conclusion is getting at.

Conclusion: Cerebral edema is especially dangerous at high altitudes BECAUSE both could occur and the symptoms are the same (so you don't know which it is). So the answer should juxtapose the two conditions in a way that presents a problem if you don't know what condition you are suffering from.

(A) This answers the question. Since the edema requires swift and accurate treatment then not knowing which condition you have prevents you from treating properly. Also try negating it: if the two treatments are exactly the same then an edema should be no more dangerous than mountain sickness at high altitudes because both are treated the same.

Gotta run so I won't go through all the answers but you'll note that none of the other answer choices presents a problem that occurs if you don't know which condition you have.

Option A ?

IMO A.

Since the symptoms are same, cerebral edema can be taken as ordinary mountain sickness and it may cause danger to life as the treatment is different.