Monday, January 12, 2009

1st Paragraph

In 1981 a new disease was discovered, little did they know at that time how big of an issue this disease would become. At first little was known about this disease, many names were thrown around, but eventually they came up with AIDS, (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Throughout the 80’s AIDS started to become a larger health issue. Many famous people in America were infected and Global awareness of the disease started to rise, but it had not been caught soon enough. The disease was soon recognized as a global health issue, and is still considered just as prominent an issue today. As a result of this, in 2003, George W. Bush instated PEPFAR (Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). Bush said that “PEPFAR is the largest international commitment in history by any nation to combat a single disease.” Many people have benefited from PEPFAR, as nearly 9.7 million people affected by HIV/AIDS have received “compassionate care” as a result of PEPFAR. However, critics of PEPFAR say that parts of the plan are controversial and make the plan ineffective. The critics do not criticize the overall goal of the program, just the means and motivation of parts of the program.

1 comment:

elise said...

Tristan, while your first paragraph provides a short introduction to the global HIV epidemic and the motivations behind PEPFAR, I'm left with several questions: what is the situation of public and private that you are illustrating here? What are the problems of the public/private that PEPFAR raises that you will then use the philosophy to reconcile? What is the thesis statement of this paragraph? What is the argument that you are planning to make here? Ultimately, this first paragraph falls short of many expectations, primarily in that it does not clearly outline the problem of the public/private in the terms of your specific situation and secondly that you do not set up a clear sense of where this argument is going. What is the thesis Tristan? No first paragraph is complete without one.