So I can't show you how, exactly, health care is a basic human right. But what I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.
quote by Paul Farmer
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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.
quote by Paul Farmer
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The human rights community has focused very narrowly on political and civil rights for many decades, and with reason, but now we have to ask how can we broaden the view.
quote by Paul Farmer
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

At the same time, it is obvious that clinicians in Haiti are faced with different, and, in fact, greater, challenges when attempting to treat complications of HIV disease.
quote by Paul Farmer
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Civil and political rights are critical, but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.
quote by Paul Farmer
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.
quote by Paul Farmer
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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.
quote by Paul Farmer
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

In fact, it seems to me that making strategic alliances across national borders in order to treat HIV among the world's poor is one of the last great hopes of solidarity across a widening divide.
quote by Paul Farmer
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

I've been impressed, over the last 15 years, with how often the somewhat conspiratorial comments of Haitian villagers have been proven to be correct when the historical record is probed carefully.
quote by Paul Farmer
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Anywhere you have extreme poverty and no national health insurance, no promise of health care regardless of social standing, that's where you see the sharp limitations of market-based health care.
quote by Paul Farmer
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
