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Difficulty: MediumForming Contrapositives

According to the newly adopted protocols by the Ministry of Health, a pharmaceutical company is permitted to bypass the standard three-phase clinical trial only if the medication in question targets a designated rare disease or has already received full regulatory approval in a recognized partner nation.

Which one of the following logically follows from the Ministry of Health's protocols?

  1. If a medication neither targets a designated rare disease nor has received full regulatory approval in a recognized partner nation, then the pharmaceutical company is not permitted to bypass the standard three-phase clinical trial.Answer
  2. B
    If a medication targets a designated rare disease or has received full regulatory approval in a recognized partner nation, then the pharmaceutical company is permitted to bypass the standard three-phase clinical trial.
  3. C
    If a pharmaceutical company is not permitted to bypass the standard three-phase clinical trial, it must be the case that the medication neither targets a designated rare disease nor has received full regulatory approval in a recognized partner nation.
  4. D
    If a medication does not target a designated rare disease, or if it lacks full regulatory approval in a recognized partner nation, then the pharmaceutical company is not permitted to bypass the standard three-phase clinical trial.
  5. E
    A pharmaceutical company is permitted to bypass the standard three-phase clinical trial if the medication in question both targets a designated rare disease and has received full regulatory approval in a recognized partner nation.

Answer

If a medication neither targets a designated rare disease nor has received full regulatory approval in a recognized partner nation, then the pharmaceutical company is not permitted to bypass the standard three-phase clinical trial.
This option accurately presents the logically valid contrapositive of the stimulus. The original statement is structured as: Bypass -> (Rare Disease OR Partner Approval). The contrapositive requires negating both sides and reversing the logical arrow. Crucially, by De Morgan's laws, negating a disjunction (Rare Disease OR Partner Approval) creates a conjunction (NOT Rare Disease AND NOT Partner Approval). Therefore, if a medication lacks both required criteria, the company is absolutely not permitted to bypass the clinical trials.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the sufficient and necessary conditions in the stimulus.
Sufficient condition: permitted to bypass trials. Necessary condition: targets a rare disease OR has partner approval.
The phrase 'only if' introduces a necessary condition.
2
Formalize the conditional statement.
Bypass -> (Rare Disease OR Partner Approval)
This establishes the core logical relationship provided by the Ministry of Health's protocol.
3
Apply De Morgan's laws to form the valid contrapositive.
Negating an 'OR' statement creates an 'AND' statement. Therefore: (NOT Rare Disease AND NOT Partner Approval) -> NOT Bypass.
A valid contrapositive requires reversing the conditions and negating both sides. For compound conditionals, De Morgan's laws mandate flipping disjunctions to conjunctions.
4
Evaluate the answer choices to find the match.
The correct option perfectly reflects the deduction: neither targeting a rare disease nor having approval (NOT Rare Disease AND NOT Partner Approval) means the company is not permitted to bypass the trial.
The correct answer to a 'must be true' inference question testing conditionals is almost always the exact contrapositive.

Key Concept

Forming contrapositives of compound conditional statements using De Morgan's laws.
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Topics

Forming Contrapositives

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