Paul Farmer
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Dr. Paul Farmer (born October 26, 1959) is an American professor and physician, currently the Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard University and an attending physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He was born in Adams, Massachusetts.
Farmer helped found the international health organization Partners In Health (PIH) in 1987. Farmer has been the driving force that has developed PIH from its small base in Cange in the Central Plateau of Haiti, into a worldwide health organization that not only treats some of the poorest people on earth but, through research and activism, has helped poor people obtain effective drugs to treat TB and AIDS. Farmer co-founded PIH with Thomas J. White and Todd McCormack and was later joined by Ophelia Dahl, now the organization's executive director, and Jim Yong Kim, who spent time as head of the AIDS department of the World Health Organization and is also a professor at Harvard Medical School.
Farmer has published more than 200 articles, chapters, and books. He has won multiple honors, including a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Aside from his hospital in Haiti, which is free to all patients, and his work in Boston, Farmer oversees projects in Russia, Rwanda, and Peru. Dr. Farmer is known for his support of a "preferential option for the poor," a central tenet of Catholic Liberation Theology. His approach has its basis in ethnographic analysis and real world practicality. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder details Farmer's work in Haiti, Peru and Russia, as well as his efforts to balance clinical and academic responsibilties with having a family of his own.
Dr. Farmer graduated summa cum laude from Duke University in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in anthropology. In 1990 he received MD and PhD degrees in medical anthropology from Harvard. His medical specialty is Infectious Diseases.
Books
by Farmer
- AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992, 1993 paperback:ISBN 0520083431
- The Uses of Haiti, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1994
- ¿Haití para qué?, Hondarribia, Spain: HIRU Argitaletxea, 1994
- Sida en Haїti: La Victime accusée, Paris: Editions Karthala, 1996
- Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, revised 2001 edition: ISBN 0520229134
- Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, ISBN 0520235509
about Farmer
- Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, Random House, 2003 hardcover: ISBN 0375506160, 2004 paperback: ISBN 0812973011
External links
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