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A review by wmapayne
Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer
5.0
Pathologies of Power is a powerful argument which charges the global health community to reconsider some of its deepest assumptions, and challenges readers to reconsider how they go about helping the poor.
This book will make you mad. Farmer has collected anecdotes and research from multiple locations around the world that powerfully demonstrate the wholesale failure of health policymakers to act in accordance with basic ethics. He also derides the United States's claimed position as a global force for good, describing how our country usually acts in self-interest more than for real moral good.
This is a powerful, if somewhat technical, thesis that deserves credence from anyone in the public health or policymaking community. Farmer writes from his lived experience among the world's poor, and his words ring true.
This book will make you mad. Farmer has collected anecdotes and research from multiple locations around the world that powerfully demonstrate the wholesale failure of health policymakers to act in accordance with basic ethics. He also derides the United States's claimed position as a global force for good, describing how our country usually acts in self-interest more than for real moral good.
This is a powerful, if somewhat technical, thesis that deserves credence from anyone in the public health or policymaking community. Farmer writes from his lived experience among the world's poor, and his words ring true.