Text one: “Measles is deadly. Vaccines are not. We need our laws to reflect this reality.” Wendy Orent, Los Angeles Times, February 10, 2019
The article of Wendy Orent is supposed to persuade readers that vaccines are safe and effective. Within the given context, she discusses a controversial topic of founding a law which requires schoolchildren to be vaccinated in order to attend school and which still many people disagree with. Being aware of the existence of these groups, she tries to argue that making vaccinations largely mandatory is necessary and she provides several reasons to support her claim.
Firstly, as a supporting argument, she mentions the measles outbreak that occurred in Clark County, Washington just when the author was writing the article. It is adverted that the outbreak led health officials to declare a state of emergency. I consider mentioning this event to be an effective part of her strategy because the severity of the problem definitely supports her main claim of the vaccines’ importance. In addition, the recency of the event may help evoke one’s emotions, so I consider the use of pathos here a strong rhetorical appeal.
Secondly, the author mentions the problematics of people connecting the vaccines to different types of diseases or health issues that are, in their eyes, caused by the vaccination. Moreover, some “anti-vaxxers” believe that vaccines are being pushed by greedy pharmaceutical companies and physicians. She finds all these arguments wrong which she tries to present via providing an evidence. As her main evidence (logos) she uses stories of different people, a mom and a dad of young children, based on which she shows similar perceptions and fears that connect people even from the opposite political parties. She uses these stories as rebuttals because she explains why these perceptions are wrong by providing data of World Health Organization, a pediatrician from Duke University or a book of a dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine.
Lastly, she discusses the problematics of refusing vaccinations as a barrier to reach the main goal of vaccination – the herd immunity. She explains the purpose of mandatory vaccinations which can give readers a stimulus to think about how it works. At the very end of her argument, she again uses pathos when she speaks about innocent victims of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks in case of spreading the anti-vaccine paranoia.
As the biggest strength of this article I consider the context provided. I think it helps readers explain the situation and it is especially important for those who read the article at a later time. On the other hand, as a reader I do not find the persuasive strategies that the author uses very strong, moreover, the article is written to attract regular readers and from my point of view, the article would attract more of my interest if she provided the evidence in a different way.
Text two: How Doctors Can Help Skeptical Patients Understand Vaccines, Amitha Kalaichandran, Los Angeles Times, June 05, 2019
The second article is from Amitha Kalaichandran who, by writing this article, tries to help doctors educate and persuade patients that vaccines are safe and effective. As it is obvious from the very beginning of the article, the main purpose is the same as of the first article, however, the strategies used are completely different.
In this article, the author primarily addresses doctors and healthcare workers while reluctant or skeptical parents are the secondary receivers.
Amitha Kalaichandran starts the argument by mentioning biggest issues – the lack of a proper foundation on which to process information. She argues that vaccines need to be considered as prevention tools and not medicines as they are being viewed by many. Giving the story of hers, she explains how the vaccines work in a human body.
Next, she mentions causality and risk as the factors that patients need to understand. She explains the effects of timing and plausibility by presenting life examples and mentions that most of us are poor judges of risk and its role in how we process uncertainty which is another reason of poor perception of vaccinations. The author stresses the necessity to emphasize and explain the rigor with which research articles are appraised and reviewed as it is the information “behind the scene” that might help parents understand the problematics and refute misleading information which they might have seen or heard.
I find the most powerful factor of this article its own strategy that the author uses. She explains the information by sharing her own experience and provides specific examples from her own life. Based on these, she tries to explain more complicated topics and attributes of vaccinations, and so it is easily understandable even for readers who are not doctors or healthcare workers. I personally find this strategy very persuasive, therefore, I consider this also the biggest strength of the article. Besides that, I appreciate the context as in the first article. Another very important strength is the background information about the author. Since she is a pediatrics resident doctor, epidemiologist, and medical journalist, both the information and the evidence are very trustworthy. As a weakness of this article I would point out mentioning the main readers to whom is the article primarily dedicated. From my point of view, starting the article with the information that doctors are the primarily addresses may draw many readers back and so they simply do not continue reading.
RWS-510 Rhetoric and Culture 