Double Dr. Paul Farmer, MD and PH.D

Double Dr. Paul Farmer, MD and PH.D (medical anthropology) practiced both traditional medicine (individual patient care and clinic/hospital care) and social medicine (public health, house calls, education, poverty alleviation) in rural Haiti.

As an undergrad at Duke, Farmer majored in the social sciences, not chem or biology.  His study of anthropology, sociology and history prepared him to practice social medicine---medical care delivered with a social justice thrust as a direct fulfillment of Mt. 25: "Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me."  Farmer's holistic approach to life and the delivery of medical care to the poor can be summed up in one long word: ethnocentrismoppressionsocialdeathpovertydisease.  His solution: inclusionlovecompassionjusticeshalom or serviceaccompanientsolidaritysocialjustice.  Another way that Farmer expressed his combination of traditional and social medicine: "cell,tissue,organ,patient,family,society,globe."

Farmer, in To Repair the World (2013), urges us to choose between weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass salvation---vaccines, prevention, sanitation and food.  "And don't you wonder if attacking the social problems of the bottom billion might be a more effective means of expunging terrorism than some of the current strategies being employed."  We ought to cut the military budget in half and then spend some of these monies on social medicine.

The nineteenth-century champions of public health believed that social justice was central to their endeavors."  "The resources [needed for an equity plan] are far less than those required to wage wars. . . . "  "But in every project, we ask the doctors and nurses to do home visits.  Not because the community health workers can't do them alone but rather because we need living links between our health care institutions and the communities we serve."

Caregiving forces you to deal with the problem of compassion in its original sense.  Compassion means "suffering with."  Remember Pastor, Prophet, Pope Francis is calling the church (priests and people) to leave the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets [the oppressed poor].

Farmer quotes part of a Heany poem: "once in a lifetime the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme."  For hope and history to rhyme, we need to build a social movement of Jubilee justice, a kingdom of God justice centering on the release of the oppressed poor.  Haiti's 500 year history has been filled with little hope and much oppression, despair and poverty.  But through the Haiti Christian Development Fund (Jean and Joy Thomas), a wave of justice has started in Fond-des-Blancs.  The Caleb interns are beginning to spread the wave.