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Michael Fox Essay

613 Words3 Pages

September 29th, 1999, Michael J. Fox, a famous actor and advocate of Parkinson’s disease, gave a speech before the Senate. In this profound speech, he discusses the ignorance of Parkinson’s and the importance of raising awareness. He not only addresses the Senate, but captures the attention of the American public. He asks Congress to improve Parkinson’s research by increasing funding to $75 million. Fox achieves his purpose by persuading the audience using repetition, anecdotes, and enumeration. He supported his purpose by using repetition to emphasize and stress the concern about the ignorance of Parkinson’s disease. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the age of 29. Due to his popularity as a young actor in 1999, he was able to …show more content…

Fox states that the current medicine is not working and that patients “wait and wait” for it to “kick in”. The importance of using “wait” twice here is to emphasize the amount of time that patients “wait” for their symptoms to cease. Patients are given medicine to stop symptoms like tremors and stiffness. Although if they take too much medicine, they form new and different symptoms like uncontrollable movement. While so many people diagnosed with Parkinson’s wait for better treatment, they are constantly trying to hide these issues. To simply live their life is a day-to-day struggle. Yet they are told to “wait” for their medicine to kick in and to “wait” for better treatment. Fox is trying to say that these people need to stop waiting and take action. Similarly, Fox uses repetition once again to make Parkison’s disease stand out from the other diseases. In the late 1900s, there had been sudden increases in Parkison cases. When Fox gave his speech, he knew that the funding for Parkison’s was not enough to keep up with the increasing numbers. He is trying to show that it is not just a minor and insignificant

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