Preventable Deaths?

In “Preventable Deaths,” the author explains that, regardless of the crippling condition of the world economy, developed countries must continue to aid developing countries. The author describes how many deaths worldwide, especially in developing countries, are preventable and pushes the blame for these deaths onto developed countries that are merely trying to stabilize their own economies. This argument is very ignorant as well as one-sided. The author fails to take the world economy’s situation into consideration and brushes the economic depression off as a light excuse for historically rich countries to horde money; unfortunately, the author’s thoughts about this are too generous. Whether a country can contribute money and aid to help another country or not is a simple demonstration of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In order for a country to have a good economy, it must have a stable economic situation. In order for a country to have money, it must have a good economy. In order for a country to contribute money and aid to another country, it must first have money of its own. In today’s economic depression, the stability of previously rich nation’s economies is gone; consequentially, no money is available to contribute to other countries. Like in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, once a bottom level is gone, the upper levels can no longer exist. In this editorial, the author seems to forget this in his or her argument and implies that, although these supposedly rich countries are experiencing one of the worst economic downturns since World War II, they have money just lying around that they can use to stop preventable deaths. Because this, of course, is not true, the author of this editorial clearly has a single-minded argument that, if one analyzes closely, defies logic.

The author of “Preventable Deaths” does an excellent and incredibly convincing job of establishing his or her opinion. The author carefully crafts his or her specific arguments in such a way that he or she is able to use as many number-related facts and statistics as possible. Because most of the people reading this particular article probably live in the developed countries this author degrades, guilt is an obvious and effective tool the author uses to force his or her views onto the readers. The author also provides seemingly simple solutions, although they are less practical and more expensive than the author leads the reader to believe, encouraging the reader to help fight poverty and disease, two guilt-inspiring causes. To appear open-minded the author lightly addresses the positives and improvements regarding the world’s poor, or counterarguments to his or her argument that the world’s poor are continuing to slip deeper into poverty and death. Although the author only briefly discuses these accomplishments and dismisses them as trivial, the fact that he or she acknowledges counterarguments makes the author seem more open-minded and thus more trustworthy. Taking advantage of multiple paragraphs, the author uses multiple short paragraphs as well as one paragraph with only one short sentence for dramatic effect. Many of the author’s paragraphs also end in abrupt, sharp sentences that establish the author’s sharp and straightforward tone. Along with the short sentences, however, the author does an excellent job of incorporating numerous sentences of varied lengths. The author utilizes both simple and advanced vocabulary depending on the point the author is trying to get across and the place the particular word, and sentence, is in the article.