Each year on TheBodyPro, we review the new research and critical events of the past 12 months that have had—or will have—the greatest impact on the way we provide HIV care and services in the U.S. This article is part of a series examining the most noteworthy clinical developments of 2022.
I never met Dr. Paul Farmer although very few degrees separated us and we were in Liberia during the Ebola outbreak at the same time. As I read his last book, “Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds,” a frank exploration of the explosion of Ebola in West African in 2014, I felt like he was telling a slightly altered rendition of my own experiences there; same places and some of the same people. What was different was his resolute resistance to accept that anything he was witnessing was okay. He took it personally that the resources available in most any hospital in the US and that would later be used to save the lives of repatriated Americans infected with Ebola, were not there saving the lives of children and their parents in West Africa. His anger and frustration were threads running through his words and stories.
As an anthropologist as well as a physician he looked at things through different lenses, seeing the centrality of the human and their suffering. Not a mere do-gooder Paul Farmer was truly a radical leveling his lances at the injustice of birthplace or skin color determining who gets a chance to be healthy or sick, live or die.
For many a young student, Paul Farmer was an ideal to be emulated and revered. His selflessness was legend (he had one suit, he donated his salary), his commitment was full-time (moved from Boston to Haiti). An ideal is hard to become and no one could be Paul Farmer except Paul Farmer. But in trying to be more like him we too can be more aware of and less accepting of unfairness. I’ll re-read Dr. Farmer and listen to recordings of his interviews not to be just like him but to be better.