essay 3

Pete Carper

Professor Mulliken

Engl 1113

1 Nov. 2011

Selling Organs

            Many people today feel as though there is an urgent matter in the world today. The problem is that there are to many people that are waiting for someone to donate them an organ. Lewis Smith claims that today there are more than eight thousand people on a transplant waiting list hoping for a miracle. Smith continues by saying that of those eight thousand people, five hundred die every year because of the lack of people willing to donate to them. An M.D. by the name of Lewis Burrows argues that many doctors and surgeons and other medical professionals are now asking for the government to consider legalizing a market for organ transplantation, believing that it would dramatically increase a patient’s chance of receiving an organ in time to possibly save their life. On the other hand, some people argue that an organ market would only pressure financially unstable people to come and alleviate some of their money problems by selling the organs they can live without.  Despite the few that would disagree, Smith argues that most people feel that the country would be much better off if a market for organs was created.

            In September of 2004 Lewis Burrows M.D. wrote an article titled “Selling Organs for Transplantation.”  This article was published in The Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine. In the article Burrows argues for the position that there should be a legal market for organ transplantation.  He also states that people should be allowed to sell one of their organs for financial gain because surgeries are relatively safe now. Burrows states “The number and rate of donations have reached a plateau and leveled off following the enforcement of lower speed limits for automobiles and the introduction of seat belt laws”  (251). In January of 2011 a journalist named Lewis Smith wrote an article titled, “Sale of Human Organs Should be legalized, say Surgeons.” In this article Lewis also advocates for the position that it should be legal for people to sell their organs to people in need of them.  Smith argues that if it were legal for people to sell their organs it would mean that donors are paid like everyone else that is involved in the transplantation process. Smith states “"If someone wants to alleviate a financial problem why shouldn't he do that? It's his choice" (Smith).

When comparing the articles, “Selling Organs for Transplantation” by Burrows and “Sale of Human Organs Should be legalized, say Surgeons” by Smith, we can see that they use different types of ethos in their arguments. In the article by Burrows we read that he has been a qualified M.D. for over twenty years and during this position he was offered a job as surgeon. Burrows’s job would be to transplant kidneys, which would include over two hundred surgeries every year. The foreign doctor that was offering him this position proposed that they should bring donor-recipient pairs from his country to the hospital where Burrows worked to perform the surgeries. These surgeries would pay the kidney donor almost two thousand dollars for their kidney, and that amount of money would drastically affect that donor’s life for the better. Even though Burrows was offered a very good amount of money he rejected the offer. After reading this we can see that Lewis Burrows has proper authority to make claims about how the idea of selling organs is ethically right. That authority comes from the fact that he has knowledge and experience in handling this in his own life.

            In the article that Lewis Smith writes you do not get the impression that he has authority to talk about this certain subject. In fact you learn nothing about his background, because he does not mention himself at all throughout the article. Smith often quotes other people like doctors and other medical professionals. For example Smith says “Recent medical advances now make it reasonable to allow a kidney market and perhaps the sale of liver donations, although other body parts remain too risky.”  This is false ethos, because Smith obviously does not have any experience in this certain area.  Although Smith does not effectively claim authority in his article, he does however establish credibility. To start the article, Smith tells his readers the story of the people all over the world that are on a transplant waiting list. By telling us the story and by backing it up with facts, Smith grabs the readers’ attention and makes them want to continue reading the article.

The argument of pathos in both of these articles is very similar.  At the beginning of Smith’s article he states the sad fact that there are almost eight thousand people on an organ transplantation waiting list in the UK alone. Smith says that if more organs do not become more readily available soon, more than five hundred of these patients will die every year. This example is Smith’s argument of pathos. He uses this story to draw certain emotions, like sadness and sympathy from the reader so they are more emotionally invested in the story and willing to listen to what Smith has to say.  Similarly at the beginning of Burrows’s article he tells the same sad and jaw-dropping facts. Burrows argues that the fact is that most of the patients waiting on an organ transplantation will likely not receive one in time due to the lack of organ donations. These facts that Burrows brings up draw many emotions from the reader, such as sadness. Burrows wants to get people to know how drastic the problem is and provide them with a sense of urgency to help.

Although both of these articles have some arguments of ethos and also some arguments of pathos, their main arguments are made from logos. They both present their readers with good evidence and reasons to believe what they have to say in their article. For example, in Smith’s article he talks about one big reason for creating a market for organ transplantation is the current problem in the black market. The black market for organs creates many problems, one of them being that a lot of the surgeries are botched because they are not performed by capable surgeons, says Smith.  He also claims that if the government created a market for organs then it would virtually wipe out the need for patients to look to the black market for help. This argument of logos is specifically using the argument of using reason and common sense. Smith is saying that there is a problem in the world and there is a solution and if you use your common sense you should agree.

Although Smith makes this sound argument and presents good facts to back it up, he commits at least one logical fallacy. He presents the facts and basically says that either the government creates a market for organs or hundreds of people will turn to the black market and will probably die. Smith presents it as though these are the only two possible outcomes. This argument leads to an either/or logical fallacy. It is making the readers think that this is the only possible solution to fixing the problem of organ shortage. In reality it is not, as Burrows suggest one of the other ways of solving this problem is to adopt a “presumed consent” in which families of the deceased have the choice of opting out of donating their loved ones organs. Burrows says if they do not opt out then the organs can be used for transplantation. This method has been adopted by a few countries such as Spain and Africa, Burrow claims, and has doubled the donation rate in those countries. However, Smith fails to consider all of the possible solutions and presents his article as though there are two outcomes to the problem.

One of the arguments of logos that Burrows uses in his article is when he tells the story of when he personally dealt with selling organs. This argument is using Burrows personal testimony of when he experienced this issue. This story that Burrow tells lets the reader logically assume that what he is saying is not made up or distorted, but it is the truth.  This is very solid argument that he makes and does not clearly lead into any logical fallacies.

The different ethos in these different articles is probably due to fact that the authors are reaching out to two different groups of people. Since his article is published in a medical journal, Burrows is reaching out to medical professionals and other like-minded people. Burrows’s audience is likely to have knowledge in health care and will be more critical of his statements than the average reader. On the other hand Smith’s article is published in a British newspaper’s online website called The Independent. Since Smith’s article is published in a newspaper, it is generally geared more towards the average reader. Since the majority of the audience is not a part of the medical profession, we can see that the article is explained in a more common vernacular.

In the two articles, Lewis and Burrows make use of some of the same writing techniques like using arguments of pathos to draw the readers in and connect them to what they are saying. Although the articles make the same basic claims, the two arguments of ethos are very different.  The arguments are probably different because of who is writing the articles and who the specific audience is. These articles present a very scary and real problem in our world today. They challenge us to think about different solutions to the problem of organ shortage. Although the two authors come from very different backgrounds it is very intriguing to see how they present there arguments in similar ways to make the reader feel what they want.   

Works Cited

Burrows, Lewis. "Selling Organs for Transplantation." The Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine (2004): 251-54. Print.

Smith, Lewis. "Sale of Human Organs Should Be Legalized, Say Surgeons." The Independent 5 Jan. 2005. Print.