A Whisper Of Aids By Mary Fisher Essay

By stating facts, gaining sympathy, and giving her audience a speaker they can trust, Fisher gave one of the most memorable and effective speeches in history. At the end of her speech, she called for her audience to take action. She provided words of inspiration and developed a care for victims of AIDS and HIV in the listener’s hearts. She begins her speech with her saying, “I would never have asked to be HIV-positive” (Fisher). However, since she is HIV-positive, Fisher decides to accept it and look at it as an opportunity to make a change. Fisher’s speech would have been not nearly as powerful if she didn’t have HIV herself. Mary Fisher believes that AIDS shouldn’t be a whisper. She wants to get it out there as a topic of discussion instead of everyone acting uncomfortable when it’s brought up. Fisher’s main purpose is to raise awareness, but not only of AIDS and HIV. She wants to raise awareness and change the way people with AIDS and HIV are treated. She goes about doing so by publically speaking wherever she can and hoping that it sinks in. She hopes that eventually, AIDS and HIV can be studied well enough and understood globally. Most importantly, Mary Fisher hopes for a

She says, “I want my children to know that their mother was not a victim” (3). In this speech she uses ethos by saying, “Tonight, I represent an AIDS community whose members have been reluctantly drafted from every segment of American Society” (1). She is saying that she represents anyone who has AIDS. Fisher is also credible to talk about this subject because of when she says, “In the place of judgement, they have shown affection” (2). Fisher is talking about how President Bush and Mrs. Bush have treated Fisher and her family no different then a person with AIDS or HIV. Mary Fisher is believable in the speech and able to relate to many different people, who either have AIDS or are HIV positive, also people who have a family member that is struggling with this disease.

“Two hundred thousand Americans are dead or dying” Two hundred thousand Americans, two hundred thousand brothers, friends, loved ones, all fighting a war; this war is not fought in foreign countries, this war is HIV/AIDS (“American Rhetoric: Mary Fisher”). Sadly, Mary Fisher is one of the many victims that are crushed by the heartbreaking diagnostic of being HIV positive, however, this was her alarm to the severity of the virus. As a result, Fisher dedicated her life to spread awareness of HIV and AIDS. In addition to the jaw-dropping speech, Fisher, has dedicated her whole life to the awareness of AIDS, through her store, biographies, non-profitable organizations, and many more. However, “A Whisper of AIDS” is the first domino in her line of work to break the “shroud of silence” known as AIDS (“American Rhetoric: Mary Fisher”).Fisher spoke from the heart, and as well as the mind in “A Whisper of AIDS”, which effectively touched the hearts of many and did exactly what she hoped it would, turned the whisper of the word AIDS into a shout spoken from numerous to prevent fear in the hearts of many. In order to show the dire importance of awareness of HIV/AIDS, Fisher, Effectively uses heartbreaking pathos, strong logos, and persuasive ethos.

In human societies there will always be issues or problems that occur which cause some form of reaction from those who feel that their values or societal equilibrium is being threatened. Stanley Cohen and Jock Young led the way in explaining the notion of moral panics and how they are formed and their consequences on society. There have been numerous of these moral phenomena over the years, which have gripped society in a vice lock of terror and more often than not, ignorance. This essay will discuss the concept of the moral panic and look at the case of HIV/AIDS which caused a huge conflict of morality within society. This essay will also analyse the failings of health organisations, politicians, and the

Thirty years ago, many believed that only gay people contracted the HIV virus, however, such speculation was disregarded once millions of people were infected. Humans were afraid to be infected, thus they stereotyped those who were infected in order to protect themselves, but the reality is that no one was safe from the HIV virus. Mary Fisher was one of few individuals that accepted the cruelty of the virus, but only by accepting what HIV is, she was able to challenge the virus. In order to awaken the society about the reality of AIDS, Mary Fisher’s speech, “A Whisper of AIDS” would send a message of challenge towards the virus and unite the humans to fight against AIDS. By balancing three different persuasive appeals; ethos, logos, and

Fisher begins by speaking of the non-existent impacts of movements that have attempted to raise awareness about AIDS. She utilizes the word “despite” in consecutive phrases to show that “despite science and research” and “good intentions”, nothing significant has occurred because “the

Throughout the Age of AIDS film many topics that were related to AIDS were brought up that I did not know anything about before. I did not know that there could so many strings attached to a disease and have such an influence in people’s lives whether it was negative or positive.

The film describing an ordinary woman Noerine Kaleeba devoting herself fighting social stigma around AIDS in Uganda is a powerful scene. Her personal account of seeing her husband dying from AIDS propelled her to fly to Geneva to meet with Jonathan Mann, the leading researcher in the global AIDS program. When she arrived at the WHO building, she was rejected to meet with Mann. However, her emotional response caught Mann’s attention and when she sat down with Mann, he told her that her husband is going to die. But Mann asked Kaleeba “there is a prejudice that is attached to this disease that we have to fight, and will you help me fight it?” Kaleeba later became the co-founder of the AIDS activism group “The AIDS Support Organization,” a group that provides care, support and counselling as well as community education for prevention in Uganda. In this scene, Jonathan Mann recognized an important social factor of the disease which is that AIDS is attached to a serious stigma and discrimination. Due to the fact that there is

Ryan White was one of the many people entangled in the hysteria. White, who contracted the virus through a bad blood transfusion, endured much ridicule in his short life. Rejected by his friends, neighbors and even his own school, White felt like an outcast. (Johnson, 1) Most of the people’s fear, stemmed from their ignorance on the topics of AIDS.(Johnson, 1) Hysteria started when people thought AIDS could be contracted by a simple handshake, which made people scared of getting the disease.(Johnson, 1) White began to educate people about this disease by spreading awareness on the subject.(Johnson, 1) People slowly started to realize that the disease wasn’t as contractible as the hysteria led them to believe.(Johnson, 1) Ryan White died at age eighteen, from complications from the AIDS virus.(Johnson, 1) White still serves as reminder of how much we learned from the hysteria. (Johnson,

When the AIDS and HIV virus crept its way into the human-race, it quickly, and without warning, claimed the lives of millions. Then when its destructive wake had finally been abated, it left behind several untold mysteries. Throughout the course of this class, all the new material we have been exposed to has added some unique piece to the puzzle of the AIDS epidemic. Each puzzle pieces have ranged from speculations on how the AIDS epidemic had begun, to what exactly has the epidemic done. We have also tackled the question and how it forced a change in society. Our newest piece of the puzzle is the documentary “The Age of AIDS,” by William Cran. Although this documentary did not surprise me in its content, it did, however, affirm certain types

In the 1980s, a mysterious disease began to take the lives of Americans. With the cause unknown, a fear grew among Americans. An unusually high rate of people was becoming sick with strange and rare diseases. When experimental treatments failed to work, people died. This mysterious disease is what we now know as HIV–Human Immunodeficiency Virus. In the past thirty-five years, the HIV has taken many turns in history. Although we do not hear about HIV and AIDS now, it is still a prevalent issue in the United States and in the world.

In 1992, August 19th in Houston Texas, Mary Fisher, the HIV positive speaker, gave an inspiring outlook on her and countless others lives. Fisher speaks about a prevailing issue in her life, her diagnoses of AIDS. At the Republican National Convention Address, Mary teaches the audience the lesson “If you believe you are safe, you are at risk.”

On August 18 1992, Mary Fisher delivered the Republican National Convention Address in Houston Texas, and with her speech entitled "A Whisper of AIDS," she entered the record books for one of the top 100 most influential speeches of the 20th century. Mary Fisher was a wife, mother, Republican, and was HIV positive; and her speech brought the realities of the AIDS epidemic directly to the people in the audience. And the people in the audience were those who felt that they were the least likely to contract the disease. However, Mary Fisher's stirring speech demonstrated to everyone that AIDS was not a disease that people of a certain sexual orientation, race, or social status contracted, but a disease that threatened all human beings.

HIV and AIDS have affected millions of people throughout the world. Since 1981, there have been 25 million deaths due to AIDS involving men, women, and children. Presently there are 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS around the world and two million die each year from AIDS related illnesses. The Center for Disease Control estimates that one-third of the one million Americans living with HIV are not aware that they have it. The earliest known case of HIV was in 1959. It was discovered in a blood sample from a man in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Looking further into the genetics of this blood sample researchers suggested that it had originated from a virus going back to the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. In 1999,

HIV is the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. A member of a group of viruses called retroviruses, HIV infects human cells and uses the energy and nutrients provided by those cells to grow and reproduce. AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is a disease in which the body's immune system breaks down and is unable to fight off certain infections, known as "opportunistic infections," and other illnesses that take advantage of a weakened immune system. When a person is infected with HIV, the virus enters the body and lives and multiplies primarily in the white blood cells. These are the immune cells that normally protect us from disease.