And then I read an article in the February 2004 Natural History by Director of the Earth Institute
at Columbia University and Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millenium Development Goals and I realized
how excited I would be that our President seems to get it about world health, if he only got it about American health and
I had an income of $30,000 a year to raise my two children on instead of $9,000.
The article is called "Why Must the Poor be Sick?" It's a review of a book by Paul Farmer called
Pathologies of Power:Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor.
It says Farmer has saved countless destitute patients lives in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, and has
shown that effective health services, even complex medical regimens, can be put in place in impoverished communiities."His
accomplishments have forcefully undercut the flimsy excuses that the rich countries have routinely offered for their inaction,
as millions of people die unnecessarily each year in poor countries...farmer has 3 themes..that the poor are not the victims
of their sins but of their circumstances,; instead of sitting in judgement on the sick and dying, rich countries should be
helping to save them. 2. The poor can be successfully treated and cured of disease, even in the most unlikely and impoverished
circumstances. 3, the human rights community should be defending the rights of the poor to health, for without the right to
health, all other human rights are likely to proove empty. Nothing, farmer argues, b except practical, physical resources--in
ample supply throughout the rich world--is keeping the poor world from undergoing a revolution in health.
"Farmer's moral stance is grounded in what the liberation theology movement calls a " preferential
option for the poor", a principle of Roman catholic social teaching that enjoins the rich to offer dignity and material support
to the poor...
But he goes on to suggest..structural violence is the key barrier to escape from poverty. In essence,
he occassionally comes close to espousing a neo-Marxist theory, according to which extremem poverty persists mainly because
of exploitation by the rich and powerful. (That the rich become steadily richer and the poor steadily poorer) is not true--"Haiti
aside--the Haitian experience does not shed much light on the massive reduction of poverty in Asia in the past quarter century,
particularly in China and India. ..or even the Dominican Republic....
contrary to the steroetypes prevalent within the bureaucraceis of rich countries and international
development agencies, the destitute adn vulnerable patients that farmer comes into contact with are smart, resourceful, and
absolutely intent on staying alive. They adhere even to complicated drug regimens,...Farmer's genius was to treat his HIV/AIDS
and MDR-TB patients without asking permission from the official aid agencies. They would surely have said no. (using donated
drugs and pilfered supplies) Farmer and his colleague Jim Kim of the Harvard medical School demonstrated clinical efficacy
in treating those 2 diseases and that drug prices could be sharply reduced through aggressive negotiations.
As their successes have become apparant, Farmer, Kim, and their colleagues have increasingly focused
on persuading policy makers to make a bold commitment to improved health among the world's poor. Hence, the third theme--that
human rights are indivisible--that so-called social and economic rights must accompany civil and political rights. Making
such a shift of emphasis would be a sea of change for a community that has traditionally been organized around the defense
of civil and political rights alone.
'''"Again and again he shows that when poor people are abandoned to their economic fate, merely
defending their civil rights will not keep them alive--muc less give them a chance for a dignified and prosperous life....the
rich have an obligation to the poor, to help the poor stay alive in the face of structural impediments of lethal dimensions..."
And here I am, all for this , all against it an hour ago. Not understanding. I still think America
should give dignity and health care to its own and then to others too but not to others while people like me go around without
dental and our ears so swollen from dental caries they are llike donkey ears....
And so it is with other situations in our lives. Those who want to be successful must help their
neighbors, friends, relatives be successful. Those who choose to live well must help others live well, for the value of a
life is measured by the lives it touches. And those who choose to be happy must help others find happiness, for the welfare
of each is bound up with the welfare of all.Incidently, the only U.S. Presidential candidate I heard talking like this is
Dennis Kucinich.
