Rhetorical Analysis Of 'Why Selling Kidneys Should Be Legal'

The trade of organs has been a controversial issue for a long time all over the world. The article “Why Selling Kidneys Should Be Legal” is published by The New York Times in December, 2011. The article is written in an effective manner to attract the audience and argue for the legalization of selling kidneys and compensation for donors. By using personal experience to grab the audience’s attention, with the aid of false analogies as well as rhetorical techniques, the article is relatively effective in sharing information of kidney trade and persuading the audience to legalize the selling of kidney.
The New York Times has been established for more than 150 years. It is an internationally influential daily newspaper with both paper newspaper
In the second analogy, the writer compares kidney donors to soldiers, police officers and firefighters. These are false analogy because there is not enough evidence to support the analogies. Bone marrow, plasma, sperm, and egg can be reproduced, but a person only has two kidneys. Although they are false analogies, they help the writer illustrate a common ground with the readers and help him persuade the readers.
In addition, the writer also uses emotional appeals in the article. By stating that only less than 50% patients receive a kidney and thousands of patients die because of the lack of kidney, Alexander aims to use pathos to arouse the readers’ sympathy for the patients. Forbidding compensation for kidney donators and the selling of kidney is a main reason for the lack of kidney because people consider the kidney donation as “a crazy act of self-sacrifice” and the donators as “saints” (Berger). Pathos helps the writer seek agreement with the readers through
However, readers’ response was mixed. Brad Tuttle of the Business Time was in line with Alexander. He said that legalization of the kidney marketplace could save money as well as people because monetary compensation was likely to encourage kidney donation (Tuttle). However, some readers opposed Alexander’s argument. Samir Chopra posed a blog entry to argue against Alexander. Although Samir thought that Alexander’s argument was interesting, he thought that the argument was problematic. Alexander made an analogy between soldiers and donators. Samir argued that most soldiers were young and poor people from minorities, so he worried that the donation with monetary compensation would be borne by those people. In addition, those poor donators would bring down the price of organs (Chopra).
In the article “Why Selling Kidneys Should Be Legal”, Alexander Berger intends to argue for the legalization of the kidney market and compensation for kidney donators. He achieves his goal by effectively using personal experience as an attention grabber, together with the aid of two false analogy, ethos, pathos, and logos. In this way, Alexander succeeds in conveying his ideas, finding evidence to support his opinions, and persuading the readers to accept his