January 16, 2003

Contact: Sarah Ray



802-443-5794

sray@middlebury.edu

Posted: January 16, 2003

MIDDLEBURY,

VT - Paul Farmer, M.D., Ph.D.,

will speak at Middlebury College on Sunday, Jan. 26, at 4 p.m. in the

conference room in the Robert A. Jones House on Hillcrest Road, off College

Street (Route 125). “Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights,

and the New War on the Poor,” the title of his talk, is also that

of his forthcoming book. Currently professor of medical anthropology at

the department of social medicine at Harvard Medical School, Farmer conducts

clinical work that focuses on diseases disproportionately afflicting the

poor. He teaches social medicine courses and also trains medical students,

residents and fellows at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He has

served as visiting professor at institutions throughout the United States

as well as in France, Canada, Peru, the Netherlands, Russia and Central

Asia. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Farmer is co-founder

of the international health organization Partners in Health, a nonprofit

organization active in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the U.S.,

and he divides his clinical time between Boston and a charity hospital

in rural Haiti, where he serves as medical co-director.

An infectious

disease physician as well as anthropologist, Farmer has worked in communicable

disease control for over a decade and is a world-renowned authority on

tuberculosis treatment and control. Along with his colleagues in the Program

in Infectious Disease and Social Change at Harvard, he has pioneered community-based

treatment strategies in low-income areas for such illnesses as tuberculosis,

sexually transmitted infections-including HIV-and drug-resistant typhoid.

Farmer has

written extensively about health and human rights, and the role of social

inequalities in the distribution and outcomes of readily treatable diseases.

Among the titles of his books are “AIDS and Accusation”(1992)

and “Infections and Inequalities” (1999). He also co-edited

“Women, Poverty, and AIDS” (1997).

A member of

the International Scientific Committee’s International Conference on AIDS,

Farmer has served on numerous international committees of the World Health

Organization. He currently serves on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’

Bureau of Communicable Disease Control.

In recognition

of his work, Farmer has received numerous awards, including the Duke University

Humanitarian Award, the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological

Association, and a 1993 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

“genius award.”

Farmer’s lecture

is co-sponsored by the Middlebury College Rohatyn Center for International

Affairs and the College’s Atwater Commons in conjunction with the winter

term course “Private Actions and the Public Good” taught at

Middlebury by former Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin and A. Joshua Sherman,

a philanthropic consultant.

For more information,

contact Emmie Donadio of Atwater Commons at donadio@middlebury.edu

or 802-443-2240.