I feel it's part of my job to make the problems of the poor compelling.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the responsibility of addressing and highlighting the issues faced by the poor.
In this quote, Paul Farmer expresses his belief that it is not only important but also a duty to bring attention to the struggles of impoverished individuals. By making their problems compelling, he seeks to encourage others to engage with these issues and consider solutions that promote social justice and equity, thereby fostering a greater sense of responsibility within society.
In practice
In a speech about social responsibility at a charity event.
If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.
I recommend the same therapies for all humans with HIV. There is no reason to believe that physiologic responses to therapy will vary across lines of class, culture, race or nationality.
With rare exceptions, all of your most important achievements on this planet will come from working with others- or, in a word, partnership.
It is clear that the pharmaceutical industry is not, by any stretch of the imagination, doing enough to ensure that the poor have access to adequate medical care.
The poorest parts of the world are by and large the places in which one can best view the worst of medicine and not because doctors in these countries have different ideas about what constitutes modern medicine. It's the system and its limitations that are to blame.
There is nothing wrong with underlining personal agency, but there is something unfair about using personal responsibility as a basis for assigning blame while simultaneously denying those who are being blamed the opportunity to exert agency in their lives
A distracted existence leads us to no goal
My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.
We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.
This is the 21st-century paradox: Even as political democracy has become the intellectual default mode for much of the world, the private sector usually trumps the public one when it comes to accommodating consumer choice.
In a jump, the subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcomes gravity. He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and his limb muscles. The mask falls. The real self becomes visible. One only has to snap it with the camera.
The critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms.
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