“Farmer writes as a passionate advocate for global social justice. He makes a compelling case for the proposition that civil rights cannot be effectively defended if social and economic rights are not. As such, it is a significant contribution to the literature on public health. I would also recommend this book to physician readers in general, understanding that although they will find the case studies interesting, many may be annoyed by Farmer’s political stance. Health and human rights advocates will find in it a rich vein of material to support their efforts.”—Journal Of Nervous & Mental Disease
“Paul Farmer presents a disturbingly simple argument in this comprehensive and compelling analysis of the intersection between structural poverty and human health.”—National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly
"Paul Farmer is a superb physician, a penetrating anthropologist, and a prophet of social justice. He combines an unflinching moral stance—that the poor deserve health care just as much as the rich do—with scientific expertise and boundless dedication. He has saved the lives of countless destitute patients in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, and he has shown that effective health services, even complex medical regimens, can be put in place in impoverished communities. . . . Farmer’s moral philosophy, anthropological insights, and medical successes are described in his trenchant and timely new book, Pathologies of Power."—Natural History
“There are many kinds of gifted physicians: clinicians, researchers, and those who build institutions. Paul Farmer is the rarest of all: a prophet. . . . Pathologies of Power is a profound work; it deserves the widest possible audience.”—New England Journal Of Medicine
“Farmer presents compelling evidence of how ‘the most basic right -- the right to survive -- is trampled in an age of great affluence’ . . .”—Psychiatric Services Journal
“Pathologies of Power is a cry for those whose own shouts go unheard. It is a bitter dose of medicine doled out on behalf of the nameless, faceless millions who have no medicines of their own.”—The Boston Globe
“One of the world’s leading physician-anthropologists presents a passionate argument against the inequalities of healthcare.”—The Ecologist
“This is Farmer’s cri de coeur that those things not be forgotten in the quest for human rights.”—The Globe And Mail
“Farmer gives voice to the unheard poor around the world and challenges medical professionals to broaden the vision of medicine to include human rights.”—The Lancet
“It’s crucial that we confront the link Farmer reveals between social inequality and disease.”—Utne Reader
"This is an angry and a hopeful book, and, like everything Dr. Farmer has written, it has both passion and authority.
Pathologies of Power is an eloquent plea for a working definition of human rights that would not neglect the most basic rights of all: food, shelter and health. This plea has special potency because it comes from Dr. Farmer, a person who has proven that the dream of universal and comprehensive human rights is possible, and who has brought food, shelter, health, and hope to some of the poorest people on this earth."—Tracy Kidder, author of
The Soul of a New Machine and
Home Town"Farmer's brilliance and charisma leap from the pages of his book. He challenges us to face the urgent theoretical and political challenges of the twenty-first century by linking structural violence to embodied social suffering and in the process calls for a new definition of human rights. Once this book is out, we will no longer be able to remain complacently--or rather, complicitly--on the sidelines."—Philippe Bourgois, author of
In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio"A passionate critique of conventional biomedical ethics by one of the world's leading physician-anthropologists and public intellectuals. Farmer's on-the-ground analysis of the relentless march of the AIDS epidemic and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis among the imprisoned and the sick-poor of the world illuminates the pathologies of a world economy that has lost its soul."—Nancy Scheper-Hughes, author of
Death without Weeping: the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil"In his compelling book, Farmer captures the central dilemma of our times—the increasing disparities of health and well-being within and among societies. While all member countries of the United Nations denounce the gross violations of human rights perpetrated by those who torture, murder, or imprison without due process, the insidious violations of human rights due to structural violence involving the denial of economic opportunity, decent housing, or access to health care and education are commonly ignored.
Pathologies of Power makes a powerful case that our very humanity is threatened by our collective failure to end these abuses."—Robert S. Lawrence, President of Physicians for Human Rights and Edyth Schoenrich Professor of Preventive Medicine at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University
"Farmer has given us that most rare of books: one that opens both our minds and hearts. It stands as a model of engaged scholarship and an urgent call for social scientists to forsake their cushy disregard for human rights at home and abroad."—Loïc Wacquant, author of
Prisons of Poverty"Paul Farmer is an original: a powerful writer, an insightful theorist, and a human rights activist on behalf of the health needs of some of the poorest and most excluded people on the planet.
Pathologies of Power brings together all his strengths, as a thinker and an activist. Every health worker, human rights teacher, and government official who seeks to improve the health status and life chances of their fellow human beings simply must read this book."—Michael Ignatieff, author of
Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry"Paul Farmer is a great doctor with massive experience working against the hardest of diseases in the most adverse circumstances, and at the same time he is a proficient and insightful anthropologist. Farmer’s knowledge of maladies such as AIDS and drug-resistant tuberculosis, which he fights on behalf of his indigent patients, is hard to match. But what is particularly relevant in appreciating the contribution of this powerful book is that Farmer is a visionary analyst who looks beyond the details of fragmentary explanations to seek an integrated understanding of a complex reality."—Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate, Economics
