Download Renee Aranzamendez Professor Deidre Garriott ERH 101

Renee Aranzamendez
Professor Deidre Garriott
ERH 101-03
15 July 2016
Help Received: Sells, Garriott, Nemceff
Project 2
Cancer is a multifactorial disease that is one of the leading causes of death worldwide
("Cancer Factsheet"). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were
approximately 8 million cancer-related deaths in 2012. On top of that, approximately fourteen
million more people were diagnosed with cancer that year. The World Health Organization has
actually stated that they expect the number of new cases to increase by over seventy percent by
the year 2035 ("Cancer Factsheet"). With alarming predictions like this on the rise, it’s only
natural for people to begin to be alarmed and disturbed by this virulent disease. No one can
completely avoid getting cancer, so what can an average person do exactly? Who exactly can
anyone rely on for help in this rising epidemic? Well, the answer to this is probably a lot closer
than one would think. It lies in what is called a discourse community. A discourse community is
basically just a group of people who all want to reach a certain goal, and they communicate
together to do so. Not just any discourse community can help to fix this cancer epidemic though.
Specifically, the National Institute of Health is making great efforts to do so. The National
Institute of Health is a Biochemical agency, and its purpose is to study and try to find better
treatments and cures for diseases. The National Institute of Health is a discourse community,
because as shown in one of their articles, “Tumor Microenvironment: A New Treatment Target
for Cancer,” the institute has a goal to target a certain part of the body to find a more effective
treatment for cancer; this affiliates with one of the six characteristics of Swales' discourse
community, because they are developing their own goals, lexis, genres, and mechanisms.
The most important point of the National Institute of Health lies in its objective to find
ways to improve health and prevent diseases ("Institutes, Centers, and Offices."). This is the
most important aspect of every discourse community, because, according to Swales, a discourse
community absolutely needs to have a goal in order to meet the other five requirements to be
discourse community. Without a goal, there wouldn’t be a point in members forming their own
genres, lexis, and using mechanisms. Due to the amount of research the National Institute of
Health has been doing for the last few years, the median life expectancy rate for people has
actually increased by thirty-one years throughout this last century ("Researching and Training.").
Additionally, there has been a clear decrease in the amount of deaths caused by cancer
(“Researching and Training”). There have been fewer recent cases of cancer reported as well.
Without this agency having this goal to help people and to increase human survival and
resistance to diseases, none of these accomplishments may have occurred as soon as they did.
With these goals in mind, a few of the members in the National Health Institute have
made further efforts towards curing cancer for good. As shown in, “Tumor Microenvironment: A
New Treatment Target for Cancer,” these members are attempting to communicate to other
members through this article. The article is located in an online journal. The National Institute
of Health mainly communicates to their target audience through online journals. Their reason
for doing this instead of sending their broadcast through magazines and newsletters is to attract a
certain audience (specifically other experts). Swales believed that the second characteristic of a
discourse community is that they all must communicate through some genre. Members of the
National Health Institute have a reason for communicating their research to one another using
these online journals. This is shown in the way they structure and write their online journals.
They use different lexis meant for specialists to understand. These terms and acronyms include
lymphocytes, myeloid, MDSC (myeloid-derived suppressor cells), and TCR (T-cell receptor)
(Tsai, Ming-Ju, Wei-An Chang, Ming-Shyan Huang, and Po-Lin Kuo). This just shows that
their target audience isn’t the general public, since an average person usually wouldn’t be able to
understand the words or concepts these experts are explaining. The article is meant to inform
and persuade other people working in the field and agency to focus on tumor microenvironments
as a cause for cancer progression rather than the things they have presently been researching
(Tsai, Ming-Ju, Wei-An Chang, Ming-Shyan Huang, and Po-Lin Kuo). They believe that doing
so will actually bring better results in for research and the best treatments.
Another thing about the NHI is that they can be found through different social medias
and they hold outreaches ("Researching and Training."). The National Health Institute has its
research hosted onto different sites. They also have links to different studies they are currently
looking into ("Researching and Training."). This is another form of their genres. Members
communicate through the website and journals. In this article, they are basically giving feedback
to other members of the National Health Institute. The authors of “Tumor Microenvironment: A
New Treatment Target for Cancer” are mainly telling other members that they are not focusing
on what they should be focusing on. The writers believe that if they accumulate enough
information on tumor microenvironments, then they might be able to discover a cure for cancer,
and ways to permanently exterminate cancerous cells (Tsai, Ming-Ju, Wei-An Chang, MingShyan Huang, and Po-Lin Kuo). This is an example of members using the agency’s mechanism
for communicating and constructively criticizing other affiliates in the agency. This is another of
Swale’s characteristics in a discourse community ("What Is a Discourse Community?").
The authors of the article actually say that researchers are making cancer progression
worse by looking into mutated proteins “as targets for drug development in order to eliminate
mutated cancer cells (Tsai, Ming-Ju, Wei-An Chang, Ming-Shyan Huang, and Po-Lin Kuo).”
This is because the drugs they are able to produce can only help to temporarily halt cancer cells
before carcinogenesis (formation of cancer cells) just begins again. The next time it starts, it is
resistant to whatever medicine they have made, and the cells just continue to get worse. The
writers of “Tumor Microenvironment: A New Treatment Target for Cancer” are criticizing the
current methods of specialists, because they continue researching things that have been proven to
be futile towards the agency’s goal.
Finally, Swales believed all discourse communities should have a threshold level of
members ("What Is a Discourse Community?"). It is obvious that the writers of my article were
looking for readers who were either on the same level of expertise as them, or somewhat below
their level. It is easier to persuade newer members to believe and follow whatever someone with
more knowledge believes. Newer members are usually more gullible, so it would be easier to
persuade them to side with these authors’ ideas. The National Institute of Health also has places
available where new members can study and train to help with research, or to just learn more
about the agency.
Works Cited
Tsai, Ming-Ju, Wei-An Chang, Ming-Shyan Huang, and Po-Lin Kuo. "Tumor
Microenvironment: A New Treatment Target for Cancer." ISRN Biochemistry. Hindawi
Publishing Corporation, 2014. Web. 15 July 2016.
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4392996/>.
"Cancer Factsheet." World Health Organization. WHO, n.d. Web. 15 July 2016.
<http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/>.
"Institutes, Centers, and Offices." National Institute of Health. U.S. National Library of
Medicine, n.d. Web. 15 July 2016. <https://www.nih.gov/institutes-nih>.
"Researching and Training." National Institute of Health. U.S. National Library of
Medicine, n.d. Web. 15 July 2016. <https://www.nih.gov/research-training>.
"What Is a Discourse Community?" Webcourses@UCF. UCF.edu, n.d. Web. 15 July
2016. <https://webcourses.ucf.edu/courses/984277/pages/what-is-a-discourse-community>.