Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World

by Tracy Kidder

“My politics were those of prophylaxis, my opponents preferred those of palliation.”

“It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation.”

“The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them.”

the Latin American bishops spoke about the oppression of the poor, calling it “institutionalized sin.” They declared that the church had a duty to provide “a preferential option for the poor.”

He visited Krome Detention Center in Florida and joined protests against what seemed to him the rank injustice of an American immigration policy that let in virtually every refugee from Cuba and sent nearly every fleeing Haitian back to hunger and disease and what had to be the Caribbean’s cruelest, most self-serving dictatorship.

How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb: “Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe,” in literal translation, “God gives but doesn’t share.” This meant, as Farmer would later explain it, “God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he’s not the one who’s supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us.” Liberation theologians had a similar answer: “You want to see where Christ crucified abides today? Go to where the poor are suffering and fighting back, and that’s where He is.”

He would say, some years later, that he had “faith,” then add, “I also have faith in penicillin, rifampin, isoniazid, and the good absorption of the fluoroquinolones, in bench science, clinical trials, scientific progress, that HIV is the cause of every case of AIDS, that the rich oppress the poor, that wealth is flowing in the wrong direction, that this will cause more epidemics and kill millions. I have faith that those things are true, too. So if I had to choose between lib theo, or any ology, I would go with science as long as service to the poor went along with it. But I don’t have to make that choice, do I?”

Margaret Mead once said, Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world.” He paused. “Indeed, they are the only ones who ever have.”