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.
Interpretation
The same treatment methods should be applied universally to all individuals with HIV, regardless of their background.
In this quote, Paul Farmer emphasizes the importance of equal access to healthcare and the universal applicability of medical therapies for people living with HIV. He argues that physiological responses to treatment are consistent among all human beings, and therefore, no disparities based on class, culture, race, or nationality should exist when it comes to healthcare and treatment options.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech advocating for global health equality.
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.
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
Since I do not believe that there should be different recommendations for people living in the Bronx and people living in Manhattan, I am uncomfortable making different recommendations for my patients in Boston and in Haiti.
Today, the practice of medicine in an urban, technological society rarely provides either the time or the environment to encourage a doctor-patient relationship that promotes healing.
Self-care is the non-negotiable. That's the thing that you have to do. And beauty is the thing that can be the benefit of the self-care. Beauty is not the point. Beauty is just a cute side-effect from self-care.
The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.
A prevention-based society is one in which every institution, whether they're a hospital or a clinic, or a school, an employer or a faith-based organization, recognizes and embraces the role that it can play in improving health.
As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol.
To me, good health is more than just exercise and diet. Its really a point of view and a mental attitude you have about yourself.
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