To model my reading of this section, and mix it up a bit, I am simply going to list a couple of the sentences of note. By that I mean, sentences that seem central to comprehension of this section and sentences that exhibit syntactical craftsmanship. It's interesting to pay attention to the sentences you notice and then try to figure out--and even more importantly, talk about-- why you notice them. So, I'll go, and then maybe you'll go? Share your sentence of note and tell us why you noticed it.
"An investigational agent, AIDS activists insisted, was no longer a hot-house flower meant to be cultivated only in the rarefied greenhouses of academic medicine, but rather a public resource merely waiting in the warming antechamber of science while doctors finished clinical trials that would, in the end, prove the efficacy of said drugs or procedures anyway" (322).
I noticed this one because it creates a link between the last section with all of the AIDS information and the significance of the patient activism for the world of chemotherapy. I also think the comparison to the hot-house flower followed my the "warming antechamber of science" is an apt image of the trials, the length of the trials, as a process that is far removed from the urgency of saving lives. It just takes too long.The choice of those sensory words "hot-house" and "warming antechamber" are essentially the same thing, but they work together to increase the temperature of the sentence and the issue towards which the reader is propelled with increasing speed at the end. The reader is left with the most important idea roasting in the recesses (Sorry! Sometimes I can't help myself) of his mind....the drugs would have proven effective anyway.
"Patients, in short, had lost patience" (322).
Well....I mean, what do I have to say? You get it, right?
Okay. Your turn. I am going to create a map of section 4, which is all about prevention.
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