The talk is called "Sex, drugs and HIV – let's get rational". It was published in April 2010 and is about 19 minutes long (on the TED website).
Summary
The video deals with HIV and how "rational" decisions by drug addicts, politics and partners of those affected influence the HIV rate. Elizabeth Pisani also explains how likely a sexual transmission of HIV is, which is surprisingly much less likely than one would think. She also points out how successful therapy affects people's perception and way of dealing with HIV.
Vocabulary
- to transmit a disease
transitive verb | trans-mit
medical definition: to pass, transfer or convey from one person or place to another
noun: transmission
- to expose oneself to a disease
transitive verb | ex-pose
medical definition: to make liable or accessible to something (as a disease or environmental conditions) that may have detrimental (=harmful) effect <children exposed to diphtheria>
- to provide national health service
noun | na-tion-al health ser-vice
a system that provides free health care for everyone and is paid for by taxes
Personal Reaction
This TEDtalk was rather compelling because it provided a more intimate view on HIV and AIDS. It also showed how national health services related to the rate of HIV infection. How political decisions in general can affect this rate.
The correlation between the amount of therapy and infections was quite intriguing as well. Diseases that are under control extremely well are rather likely to rise again. This is mainly due to the fact that will not be as visible. Therefore, people will lose their fear of infection and start to neglect protecting themselves. In some cases, the drawbacks might also simply outweigh the advantages. Something that can also be noticed in the recent discussions about vaccination.
Presentation Technique
Elizabeth Pisani presents her talk really well in my opinion. She speaks slowly and clearly. There is some interaction with the audience and keeps eye contact. Even though she talks about medical issues such as the transmission of HIV, she makes it easy to understand for people who are no specialists in this field.
Pisani uses a lot of humor in her presentation – at the beginning to catch the audience's attention and later to keep it. She also uses slang quite generously, sometimes simply making extremely straight forward statements ("She is a chick with a dick.") This way, she manages to keep the audience from getting bored. It also helps to get the attention of those whose mind has already started wandering back. Oh, and she chose a really catchy title. What good is a presentation that nobody listens to?
The beginning of her presentation already caught my attention. She started with a quote, which she then revealed as her own in a humorous way. The thing that really spiked my interest though, was when she explained that it was only partially true and she would argue against it. From then on I just really wanted to know how this would turn out.
No comments:
Post a Comment