Example
The following example of an introduction and conclusion employs all
of these devices in some measure. It is taken from a paper on organ
donation and the effects that modern medical practices are having
in discouraging potential donors from pledging their organs. The first
two paragraphs present two contrasting anecdotes, while the third and
fourth outline the theme of the paper, the problem it sets out to
examine.IntroductionOn a cold, frosty morning, as the sun begins to rise above the lin-
gering fog of night, a Chinese prisoner awaits his execution in a dark,
damp cell that echoes with the reverberations of his own faltering
heartbeat. Blindfolded, with his hands and legs bound as he kneels
with bent head, he feels the cold steel of the gun at the back of his
neck. The shot is fired and he loses consciousness, but he is not
dead. He is rushed to the hospital ward, not to save his life, but to
have his organs ‘harvested’.
In another hospital, a world away in a small children’s ward
in South London, two parents clutching each other, worn down
by years of struggle and tension, look anxiously on as their five-
year-old son, Nicholas, is connected to a now-familiar machine
that will do for him what his own kidneys cannot. Despairingly,
they know he cannot struggle on indefinitely without a new
kidney.
These horrifying scenes portray two sides of a problem that
defies easy solution. Despite the shortage of donated organs and
the despair of those who wait, most of us, out of fear and mis-
trust it seems, choose to have our bodies and all their life-
saving organs either incinerated or buried to decompose beneath
the ground. In Britain, a country with a population of 59 million,
the number of donors fell to just 981 in 1995, and in Europe as a
whole there were 15% fewer hearts and 14% fewer kidneys avail-
able to the Eurotransplant Foundation, that co-ordinates organ
collection.
As a result the death toll of those who could wait no longer grows
day by day. In the US each year over 3,000 patients die for the lack
of organs, that is eight to ten a day, one every three hours. And all
this tragic waste of life could be avoided. More than enough organs200 WritingHTW26 7/27/01 8:37 AM Page 200