Sachs plenary from 'Massive Effort' meeting (2)
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Tim, you asked for feedback on Sach's speech, and I am glad to give
you my opinion about it, although it is decidedly personal and unsci-
entific. As I read the speech, I did a little dance of joy around my
office. *Someone* needed to be blunt about the crisis the world's
poor face, and Sachs did just that. He displayed the problem in bald-
faced, undecorated relief.
Then he listed why we should care, what we can do ("we" being nations
and individuals alike), how much it would cost, and why we should be
ashamed at having done so little to date. He was eloquent, but did
not resort to "poor-poor-pitiful-victims" type stories that demean
people 's suffering and (ironically) tend to distance the listener
from the unrestrainable horror of the situation.
My greatest delight came when he jerked the rug out from under the
drug companies' argument that it would be useless to lower the price
of essential drugs because there are no viable health care infra-
structures in the poor countries to distribute them: who can manage a
health care system on US$ 7.50 per capita?
Sachs has done the essential first part of the work that lay ahead:
stating the problem. It is all of our responsibility to guide our
governments into doing the right thing. I hope they will, but I will
try to do more than hope.
Janice Price, M.Ed., RN
HIV Research Coordinator
Swedish Medical Center
747 Broadway, Rm. 833
Seattle, WA 98122, USA
Tel: +1-206-386-2523
Fax: +1-206-386-6121
Beeper: + 1-206-405-6634
mailto:janice.price@mail.swedish.org
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