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

With an MD and PhD from Harvard and a teaching position at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Paul Farmer states that what he wants in life is to be a country doctor. What he is, though, is a doctor to countries: poor countries around the globe such as Haiti, Peru, Russia, and Rwanda, where the citizens have major health problems and little access to care. Here, French adapts Kidder's adult examination of Farmer (first published ten years ago), leaving the ethnographic journalistic approach intact and allowing Kidder's personal interpretations about the man to surface. He retains many of Farmer's own observations about the "O for the P" (or options for the poor) and narrations about Haiti that represent Farmer's views on the political, social, and medical situations in a country he loves. What has been cut is much of the science behind Farmer's infectious disease research, although French does retain a basic overview that leads to an understanding of MDR (multi-drug-resistant) TB and the way, before Farmer's intervention, such illnesses were misreported and ineffectually treated by the World Health Organization. Without making Farmer a saint (and for such a dedicated and driven individual, that's not easy), French's adaptation gives young readers a thoughtful examination of a complex man operating in a complex world. An author's note updates Farmer and his team's activities over the past decade. betty carter