Paul Farmer’s Pathologies of Power exposes the brutal realities many oppressed face and the core foundations responsible for those in destitution. He presents these harsh truths through personal stories that shock the reader into understanding the complexity and severity of the issue of healthcare. Poverty’s role is critical in that it may be the root cause of those afflicted with disease, but also prevents those from the needed treatment. Farmer radically calls for a change in healthcare delivery and overall calls for a change that will address and irradiate poverty along with structural inequality.
With his many years of experience in Haiti, Chiapas, and other third world countries, Farmer has derived his understanding of how healthcare should
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The core aspects of his model that align with liberation theology can be seen in the phrase “observe, judge, act”. Both call for a genuine and thorough attention to the many factors, past and present, to the issue at hand. In situations of abject poverty, one must understand that poverty just does not happen on its own; it's the result of human action. Furthermore, both call for extensive analysis that unveils the social systems in place that produce oppression and violence. He uses these tools to then help decide what must be done. Importantly. Farmer recognizes that liberation theology calls one to, “first, seek the root causes of the problem; second, to elicit the experiences and views of the poor people and to incorporate these views into all observations, judgements, and actions” (Farmer 146). If one does not understand the social circumstances and needs of a certain group there can be no success. But, it's also vital to gain those understanding directly from the oppressed and not impose already held beliefs. Spreading the word about the injustices that are taking place in this world, there then must be action towards fixing the cause and helping those already afflicted. Through these understandings he finds fault in the current human rights model, specifically the charity and development model. In short, the charity model does not address the causes of suffering and merely poses as a band-aid while also sustaining the belief that there will always be someone inferior. Development is a slow process that forgets the individual and ignores the systems already in place causing harm. Farmer strives for the social justice approach which humanizes the experience of the oppressed while also looking at the economic or social systems that cause harm. In all, it calls for equal opportunities and access to resources for a healthy and contented
In his 1972 essay “Famine, Affluence, and Poverty”, Peter Singer tackles what seems on the surface to be a fairly simple debacle. He opens his essay by discussing the lack of food, shelter, and medical care in East Bengal. It is a given that every human deserves, in the very least, food, a place to sleep, and basic medical care. Singer claims that the problems involving poverty around the world is not an inevitable problem. He alleges that if we all pitched in what we can, these problems could be abolished. But unfortunately many people do not want to give up what they have for the sake of others. For these people, Singer put forth his seemingly obvious argument. It goes as follows:
In the essay “Spare Change”, the author, Teresa Zsuaffa, illustrates how the wealthy don’t treat people facing poverty with kindness and generosity, but in turn pass demeaning glares and degrading gestures, when not busy avoiding eye contact. She does so by writing an emotional experience, using imagery and personification whenever possible to get to the reader’s heart. Quite similarly, Nick Saul writes, in the essay “The Hunger Game”, about how the wealthy and people of social and political power such as “[the community’s] elected representatives” (Saul, 2013, p. 357) leave the problem of hunger on the shoulders of the foodbanks because they believe “feeding the hungry is already checked off [the government’s] collective to-do list” (Saul,
Building a system to serve an underserved population may be difficult but it is not impossible. There are two major problems. There are cultural problems, historically based, related to the lack of trust in the dominate culture. And there are problems related to the stereotypical lenses the dominant culture chooses to wear. The dominate culture, who is in control of health services, and are fully aware of the health disparities but observe no profit, nor do they have the resources, in making a certain population of people are healthier. By identifying the concerned parties, the health disparities, and the problems that are ahead it is noted that positive outcomes will result
The satire Animal Farm by George Orwell expresses the idea of self-government through the animals. The animals play the role of humans, in this way using most, if not all, of the human characteristics.
Pogge, Thomas Winfried Menko, and Keith Horton. "Famine, Affluence and Poverty." In Global ethics: seminal essays. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2008. 1-14.
Paul farmer starts his book by explaining his intentions of writing this and he was afraid that his book will do bad more than good and will be used against the poor and unfortunate instead of in their favour. He clearly want this book to be a contribution and a way to explain pain, affliction and evil in the world. He addresses some major causes of the suffering and under what conditions people in third world countries suffer the most. Mostly countries that have civil wars taking place within it that particular country would face the most destruction and its people will face conditions that will not allow them to live decent lives.
The hunger for power is personified by Jeanine Matthews. As the leader of Erudite, she attempts to control Dauntless and destroy Abnegation, lying to the public in the process. Power makes her cruel and ruthless, showing the lust in which she has for power. Jeannine is positioned to be more petition of power when we are introduced into the scene of identifying what fraction the teens will be joining, a high angel shot of her represents her power and how high she is in leadership.
In conclusion, the ultimate significance to this type of work is to improve the quality of healthcare in these extremely impoverished nations. This argument is represented in Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, Monte Leach’s “Ensuring Health Care as a Global Human Right”, and Darshark Sanghavi’s “Is it Cost Effective to Treat the World’s Poor.” The idea that universal healthcare is a human right is argued against in Michael F. Cannon’s “A “Right” to health care?” Cannon claims that it would not work, and fills the holes that the other authors leave in their arguments. All of these articles share the same ultimate goal, and that is to provide every individual with adequate health care, and to not let so many people die from things that could easily have been prevented or treated.
As Paul Farmer pursues to bring health care to impoverished nations, he builds the health care systems, is able to provide services for ones living in poverty, and speaks about the improved health care system in Cuba. While watching Paul Farmer’s interview, he made it clear that giving impoverished nations health care will benefit them all. He says, “Is
This week we explored the health care through a feminist lens, which analyses race, gender, and power. The first piece by Murphy gave a background on protocol feminism and the history of "feminist self-help clinics" (Murphy). Such clinics were understood as a "mobile set of practices" (Murphy 25) that challenged the politicization of medical practice, their power dynamics, and worked to help women reclaim bodily autonomy. If my reading is correct protocol feminism and feminist protocols were the lessons and guidelines created and dispersed across the country to aid women, of all races, on how to take control of their own health care. Moreover, Murphy emphasizes the connection between feminism and technoscience, but I did not understand what technoscience was in the terms of her article. Finally, due to the way that many of these clinics appeared to be "unraced" because they were White run, racial issues that plague health care were not adequately addressed and once again the white people became the foundation for the understanding of human health. The second piece by Roberts discussed the racial implications of the neoliberal influences on
This means that people were arbitrarily not receiving the medicine and care they needed. Farmer felt that was unconscionable and an affront to one’s basic rights. Moreover, he also felt that an individual’s “civil rights cannot really be defended if (their) social and economic rights are not” protected, too (Farmer 9). In other words, we cannot fully exercise our rights as citizens if we do not have social and economic equality. For instance, if some wealthy individuals receive heath care that is superior, while less influential patients receive inferior treatment, that is unjust and corrupt. Farmer strives to discover a way to progress towards more attainable social and economic rights so that public health care can be more widely available and effective. The author also raises the point that race and sex are large factors in why medicine is not distributed and produced the way it should be. Obviously, these factors need to be addressed when devising a public health care system that will give fair and uniform treatment to all its
Seyom Brown, former senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Brookings Institution, the John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies, and the Harvard Universty’s Belfer Center. He has worked in the Department of State and the Department of Defense. He has taught in he has taught in countless universities such as Harvard University, Columbia University, and Brandeis University. His goal was to create discern assumptions of policymakers about international interests and to look at the power of which the US had in order to protect and further these interests. He also wished to connect these views that he had so he could be able to project and show them
Nearly 50,000 people, including 30,000 children, die each day due to poverty-related problems and preventable disease in underdeveloped Countries. That doesn’t include the other millions of people who are infected with AIDS and other incurable diseases. Especially those living in Sub-Saharan Africa (70%), or “the Third-World,” and while we fight to finish our homework, children in Africa fight to survive without food, or clean water. During the next few paragraphs I will give proof that poverty and disease are the two greatest challenges facing under developed countries.
Authority in a society is a necessary evil which when unfettered, results in the abuse of power. Power has long been considered a corrupting and a disrupting force in function and in influence. Underlying motives and greed fuel those who seek to gain and or abuse this power. The Crucible examines this twisted force as it corrupts societies’ clergy, blinds its justices, and empowers those who seek to abuse it. Arthur Miller shows how power can be a corrupting influence and how it can blind the judgment of authoritative figures.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men,” quoting historian Lord Acton. Before reading the quote, I never noticed the relationship between power and corruption in the real world. I thought of power as a form of recognition for hard work, that in turn is a positive outcome. After putting some thought into it, I realized my mistake