Rhetorical Analysis Of Uaem Davis

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“Change happens from bottom up”( https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/705554909421121537). Every major claimsmaking group is comprised of multiple subgroups that create change at a local level. Universities Allied for Essential Medicine is one such change-making, global, claimsmaking group that advocates essential medicine as a right, not a privilege. Each claimsmaking group, like UAEM, has grounds, warrants, and conclusions, which allows the group to advocate for its cause. UAEM’s Davis chapter is a paragon of a subgroup that creates local change in the stead of its parent claimsmaking group. It strives to augment essential medicine resources for underprivileged communities using many persuasive strategies like….. Through this endeavor, …show more content…

The major pharmaceutical companies and Universities are making a lot of money on the drug market, but are not caring enough to fund the essential medicine for the ‘neglected diseases’. To promote these grounds, UAEM Davis uses two rhetorical strategies: “statistics” to amplify the amount of diseases that are underrepresented and the “villain/victim narrative” to show who is affected by the high drug prices for patents and prescriptions. Statistics, “[numbers] that suggest the scope of the problem” (Best 33), are shown to represent the level of disregard certain diseases receive in the medical market, like “1.3% of all drugs created in 29 years were for neglected diseases” (http://uaemdavis.wixsite.com/uaem/who-we-are). This statistic clearly establishes the problem of discrimination in disease research and funding, which is leading to many preventable deaths. The second rhetorical strategy that goes hand-in-hand with the statistics is the ‘villain/victim narrative’. “UC medical research yields billions in profits for major pharmaceutical companies, while 10 million people die every year in developing countries because they can’t afford medicines developed right here on our campuses…” …show more content…

During the interview, Kelly stated that “[UC Davis] participated in a ‘dying’ [last year], where people went in front of the pharmaceutical company [Gilead] and laid on the streets, pretending to be dead…[It] sent a powerful message”(Kelly 15:34). The goal of this type of physical protest is to peacefully demonstrate people’s plight due to spiked pharmaceutical prices approximately “820 times” (https://vimeo.com/144622081 1:13 UAEM website). UAEM Davis gets across the message that people cannot stand by allowing pharmaceutical monopolies to crush lower-income (underprivileged) families because that is not the humanitarian way! At the Gilead protest, the UAEM Davis chapter partnered with another Davis organization ‘Act Up’ to help fellow citizens by voicing their concerns on unaffordable healthcare costs, bolstering the value of the group’s humanitarian

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