Mountains Beyond Mountains: Healing the World: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer by Tracy Kidder

I was bored one friday, and this book was lying around, and I borrowed it from a friend (Thanks Ilan!) It was not recommended to me, nor had I heard of it before.

Wow. Great book. The writing was good, the plot even better. It was a bit overly choppy and stylistically a bit obsfuscated, but it was barely noted with the fast pace of the writing, especially on what would otherwise not be such a gripping subject. This is the story of a doctor treating those who simply don't have access to that which we take for granted. Not having money for basic medicine is, in many ways, the least of their troubles: these are people with no understanding of basic scientific medicine, how to take the pills they were given, or even sufficient food and clean drinking water.

The book does not attempt to hide the radical liberal agenda motivating the doctor, but some very good points made are about fairness and global economic health care. The only point that struck me which the book seemed not to address fairly is the fact that within the current socioeconomic system, the behaviour displayed by the doctor is not sustainable, both on a personal level and on an economic one, by most of humanity. The issues involved are ones that should plague any thinking person - is my unthinking behavior helping to prop up a system that causes such misery to a majority of the world?