Avik Sarker Dr.

OHara ENG/CAS 137H 16 October 2012 All Cancers Are Created Equal No one deserves to die. Such a simple moral truth the website

noonedeservestodie.org proclaims in its title; yet, at first glance, the webpage seems to deliver a construed message of hate, condemning specific categories of people to death. In a campaign released over the summer of 2012, The Lung Cancer alliance pursued grabbing attention through various physical posters decrying various stereotypical sets of people ranging from cat lovers to the rich. These signs were situated in large cities, directing them to the website noonedeservestodie.org. Looking at this website, the campaign uses a variety of techniques within the structure of this sleek, simple, and technologically advanced website to establish an audience after leading them to the absurd to convince the reader to support the cause of lung cancer by releasing a stigma against it. From the start, the campaign takes a bold approach into establishing its audience and its moral stance. Initially, the website presents the main enthymeme of no one deserves to die twisted to decry a horrible meaning, saying that hipsters, the tattooed, crazy old aunts among other specific groups of people deserve to die. These morbidly worded posters scroll across the top of the website, but the user soon discovers the negative sentences are in fact unfinished statementsthey finish with the phrase, if they have lung cancer. By terminating this hostile statement, the site establishes the topic of its concern. The website continues to inform the user about its purpose in the next phrases by

Sarker 2 trying to reverse the seemingly negative toll on its moral authority. Keeping in mind that its audience is still processing the hurtful statements prior, the campaign attempts to convince the audience that the absurd statements said before represent the general opinion, or stigma, on lung cancer. This campaign makes the assumption here that the audience is against discrimination and the moral stance that people should die if they have lung cancer. By taking this stance, the campaign establishes an audience through

highlighting its moral position against this stigma. After determining this audience, the campaign continues pushing its position through a number of statistics and a comparison to other cancer movements to further its claim that the lung cancer movement should not be downplayed. The page scrolls to reveal a claim of fact that lung cancer takes more lives than the other cancers, colon, breast, and prostate cancers, combined, with numbers following. This pushes the audience to concoct the logical conclusion that lung cancer should receive more attention. However, the campaign goes further with these numbers and their comparison to each other through the next graphical animation, which displays these death numbers in a bar graph that then turns into a graph showing federal funding per death for the cancers as the use scrolls, highlighting the large gap that exists in funding compared to the other three funds mentioned. By showing these numbers in a dynamic and visually confirming manner, the campaign reestablishes the need for support of its cause. Besides the numerical argument, it is also worth noting the campaigns contemporary movements and its rhetorical situation. Take for example, the breast cancer movement, and the connection its campaign has made with the connection pink. Considering that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and with the notion of

Sarker 3 pinkwashingthe inundation of pink apparel from shoes to cereal boxesthe breast cancer cause has an easily relatable and human message to deal with (Crowley 42). Compared with the this lung cancer initiative, the notion of heart-tugging emotional appeal does not fit well with its message, so the campaign must use a different mode of emotional appeal to enhance its cause. Further down the page, the website does this through a personally pathetic appeal that evokes a feeling of fear by utilizing a Facebook-based technological tactic. The campaign first continues with its statistical argument, stating that one in fourteen people will be diagnosed with lung cancer. It proceeds to the more personalized argument in the next segment, where it gives the amount of ones Facebook friends that would be affected when using the statistic given before. When the user optionally allows the website to connect to their Facebook, the blank pictures and generic number are replaced with pictures of their friends and a comparable amount of people affected. By allowing the possibility of the pathetic argument to involve the readers Facebook friends, the campaigns technologically oriented pathetic argument scares the audience into making the campaign personally relevant. At the bottom of the webpage, the campaign closes its argument though reiteration of the main enthymeme in its undistorted form, that is, no one deserves to die. The final few statements of the page urge the user into taking action and reiterate the ethical argument from before, saying that someone simply deserves to die if they have lung cancer. The final section also reintroduces the characters shown at the top of the page, but with the rectified enthymeme overlaid instead of the extreme distorted one. By this point, the enthymeme is fully explained by all the content of the website; lung cancer is not only

Sarker 4 caused by personal choice, it does not discriminate, it is downplayed by society, and that it could happen to anyone. Through its astonishingly attention-grabbing campaign to end a social stigma and support the cause against lung cancer, the Lung Cancer alliance introduces a rhetoric distinct from parallel movements against cancer. The movement effectively grabs and

manipulates a message to form an audience united with its stance against discrimination and the downplaying of lung cancer as secondary to the other causes. It effectively utilizes graphical design to imprint the message that lung cancer is underfunded through statistics. Additionally, the website uses a different form of pathetic argument to involve the audience with the campaign at a personal level, through the use of Facebook. From the physical posters to the website, this campaign takes an interesting twist into making its cause known. By using this stark contrast with the other cancer movements, this campaign rehashes viewpoint concerning the different cancers; despite what each cancer is associated with, they should not be dealt with unequally.

Sarker 5 Works Cited Advertisement. No One Deserves To Die of Lung Cancer. Lung Cancer Alliance, June 2012. Web. 1 Oct. 2012. <http://noonedeservestodie.org/>. Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. Print.