AIDS AND ACCUSATION

Paul Farmer is quite the inspiration. Reading his book has put countless ideas concerning Haiti's relationship with the US in perspective for me. I have read up on the history of Haiti before, but never in the context of the issue with HIV/AIDS. His background information and history on the oppression of a whole country since its creation explains many questions frequently asked when Americans think of Haiti. Our discussion on Thursday about the importance of including history of a culture and the importance that culture plays in an epidemic made me even more appreciative of Farmers writing style for this piece. When you only look at a demographic, you see numbers. Every number is a person. Farmer, with his focus on medical anthropolgy, does well not to forget this. When we forget that each number is a life and that each life had a history, our problem changes from just an epidemic to an epidemic of blame and ignorance.