Organs Sales Will Save Lives Rhetorical Analysis

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Imagine being told that your kidney does not function anymore, and having to wait an average of ten years of waiting for a transplant, and yet being afraid of dealing with the black market for a new organ. Joanna Mackay believes that these lives lost every day can be saved, as said in her essay “Organs Sales Will Save Lives”. MacKay’s purpose is to decriminalize organs sales. The rhetorical strategies used by MacKay are ethos, logos and pathos. These 3 strategies are used to persuade the audience of the benefits that may come to both the donor and the patient if decriminalized. The first rhetorical device is logos; it is used to show the number of people that suffer the long wait of a second chance at life. MacKay states “The list is long. With over 60,000 people in line in the United States alone, the average wait for a cadaverous kidney is ten long years” (Mackay 157). 60,000 people live the burden of hoping to get the organ needed before it is too late. That number shows that this problem is not small and affects a good percentage of the United States. To add to that …show more content…

It is said that “Some agree with Pope John Paul II that the selling of organs is morally wrong and violates “the dignity of the human person” (qtd. In Finkel 26), but this is a belief professed by healthy and affluent individuals” (158). MacKay is using ethos the show the morality of those that believe it is wrong for organ sales. The morals shown are those of people who have yet to experience a situation of needing a new organ. Having a healthy and wealthy lifestyle, they cannot relate to those that have trouble with money and a unhealthy lifestyle as the poor. The poor and the middle class are the ones that suffer being last on the list for a transplant, thus have different ethics. Paying an absurd amount of money and still having to be at the bottom of the list for a transplant, is something no person anywhere in the world should have to

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