Deductive Reasoning In Rebecca Skloot's Reasons?

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example, Skloot states, “As Cliff and Fred lowered Henrietta’s coffin into her grave and began covering her with handfuls of dirt, the sky turned black as strap molasses. The rain fell thick and fast. Then came long rumbling thunder…” and Henrietta’s cousin Peter, stated, “We shoulda knew she was trying to tell us something with that storm” (92). Skloot, includes this casual argument because it illustrates how Henrietta’s family believes Henrietta created the storm. Skloot also uses deductive reasoning, which goes from general to specific. For example, she states, “First, HeLa didn’t grow from one of Henrietta’s cells. It grew from a sliver of her tumor, which was a cluster of cells. Second, cells often behave differently, even if they’re all from the same sample, which means some grow faster than others” (99). Skloot uses deductive reasoning to explain how HeLa began and uses specific evidence. Skloot uses both types of reasoning in her book to create a stronger argument. Even though Anne Fadiman …show more content…

Rebecca Skloot writes: At that point, more than 15,000 women were dying each year from cervical cancer. The Pap smear had the potential to decrease that death rate by 70 percent or more, but there were two things standing in its way: first, many women- like Henrietta-simply didn’t get the test; and, second, even when they did, few doctors knew how to interpret the results accurately, because they didn’t know what the various stages of cervical cancer looked like under a microscope. (29) This statistical statement is meant to distract the reader from the real argument, which is how the doctors were taking cervical cancer cells from their patients without their consent. This fallacy hurts Skloot’s credibility because as a reader it seems like she is ignoring one of her main points in her argument, which is the unethical removal of their patient’s cells that doctors were

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