Exploring the Impact of Power on Health and Human Rights: A Look at the New War on the Poor

fruitjuicer1: This is a philosophy, a way of life, ethical living. If you don't give any of your money to charity, move on.

United States on Feb 11, 2023

Lynn Rist: I like everything about this book. It should be mandatory for every Medical student, History, Sociology, Psychology, Snd Political Science student. Structural violence is a new important phrase that I learned meaning if a country denies people with pre-existing medical conditions that as a form of violence because it leads to death by structure of politics. Also if the poor cannot afford medical care which is a human right that is a form of structural violence.

United States on Mar 13, 2020

Kenneth W. Jones: Gift

United Kingdom on Nov 10, 2018

Ariss McKalynn: This is another excellent book from Farmer, critiquing health disparities as related to globalization. Or at least that's my perspective.

Farmer draws on his extensive knowledge and fieldwork in Haiti in all the books I've read by him, so this one is no exception. That said, the book is still unique and not a repeat/rehash of prior work as is so very common.

I wish I could get more people to read books like this, which very logically point out that social Darwinism is bs, and power rules the world. This is a great critique and discussion of globalization, health, and human rights.

I wish we could convince our current administration to put this on their list of required readings...

United States on Feb 16, 2017

DCC: A classic book that looks at causes behind the causes of disease. Well worth reading (other than the longest series of acknowledgments I have ever seen in a book) and particularly important for physicians to understand why diseases occur beyond the proximate causes.

Canada on Jul 27, 2016

Wendy Butler: Excellent and thought-provoking. The concept of 'pragmatic solidarity' is so simple! Poverty is the key cause of poor health and early death. NHS should learn the lessons. We cannot just stand up for the poor and dispossessed we must stand alongside them and act together. The evidence from Haiti & Cuba that 'Partners in Health' have gathered (in the course of practical action) is damning of traditional models of healthcare. This should be compulsory reading for all trainee doctors, medical students and Government Ministers.

United Kingdom on Jan 23, 2015

S Wood: I have known of Paul Farmer for years, principally through footnotes in his fellow Bostonian Noam Chomsky's books (whom Farmer thanks in his acknowledgements to this book) and in a variety of other books and articles over the years, and I thought it was about time that I became better acquainted with his writings and managed to get my hands on a copy of his 2004 book "Pathologies of Power".

Farmer's basic aim in this book is to argue for a working definition of Human Rights that includes those social justice: in general those social and economic rights which articles 22-27 of the UN Declarations of Human Rights (1948) describe. His particular expertise is in the medical sphere and it is that aspect that the book primarily, but far from solely, focuses on. The first part of the book is based around his experiences with the Non-Governmental Organisation "Partnerships in Health" (which he co-founded in 1987) in Haiti, Cuba, Mexico (Chiapas) and Russia. Haiti is where Partnerships in Health started its first Clinic in an area of Central Highlands where a World Bank funded Dam had submerged the best farming land driving the peasants onto higher, far less fertile land, where they...

United Kingdom on May 18, 2014

R. Yusuf: In Pathologies of Power Dr. Farmer has provided critical evidence of health care as it is effected by social and global inequalities. He discusses cases regarding AIDS and the Haitian Boat Refugees, structural violence in Haiti and Mexico, multi-drug resistant TB in Russia, community based health projects in Chiapas, amongst other reflections on relevant cases and history. The book makes a forceful argument for the need to integrate health and human rights to improve the livelihoods of marginalized people. Professor Farmer recommends the following to complement present efforts to achieve the new health and human rights agenda: make health and healing the symbolic core of the agenda, make provision of services central to the agenda, establish new research agendas, achieve independence from powerful governments and bureaucracies, assume a broader educational mandate, and secure more resources for health and human rights. Furthermore, Dr. Farmer has provided evidence showing that the implementation of the said recommendations saved lives, improved healthcare outcomes, and positively impacted the lives of the sick and marginalized.

United States on Jun 22, 2010

K-Nine: Dr. Farmer and his associates "Partners In Health" pursue "pragmatic solidality" for the destitute sick. They exert a right-based approach, in which social and economic rights for those who are deprived or oppressed by power are protected under liberation theory they assert. Now, I learn that, in a world of affuluence, you should recognize public health and equal access to medical care, where the rights of the poorest are abused through "structual violence." In the end, Dr. Farmer and his colleagues redistribute goods and services to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor in this harsh new world or "globalization."

Japan on Dec 07, 2006

Patti M. Marxsen: Paul Farmer's "Pathologies of Power" will probably give you a headache, undoubtedly cause sleep disturbance, and very likely turn your stomach. In short, it will make you sick. But if you are well enough to read this and rich enough to consider purchasing the book, you are better off than the "disposable millions" whose lives he illuminates and honors in this indictment of global public health as-we-know-it. In this passionate and well-researched treatise, a world-class physician takes his own disciplines of medicine and anthropology to task for failing to ask the right questions. Then, noting that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry in the most affluent country in the world, he blows through its defense of those extraordinary profits like a gust of fresh air. A similarly searing deconstruction of health policymakers' rationale for "cost-effectiveness" and their elite argot of oppression reveals a blame-the-victim mentality that plagues the world and explains why, in the midst of unprecedented wealth, over 40 million Americans are without health insurance of any kind. And that is just the beginning.

While Farmer's hospital in Haiti, Zanmi...

United States on Apr 10, 2004