medium · GMAT Verbal
Traditionalists hold the appendix is useless because people who lose it suffer no obvious harm.
(1) **Yet after severe gut infections, people without an appendix repopulate beneficial bacteria more slowly.**
(2) **The appendix therefore likely serves as a protective reservoir of gut flora, not a vestigial remnant.**
The two boldface portions play which of the following roles in the argument?
- The first states the position the argument ultimately rejects; the second is a premise supporting the traditionalist view.
- The first is a finding that counts against the traditionalist position; the second is the conclusion the argument draws.
- The first is the argument's main conclusion; the second is evidence offered to support it.
- The first is a concession the argument makes to the traditionalists; the second qualifies that concession.
- Both are competing conclusions that the argument declines to choose between.
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