If I am hungry, that is a material problem; if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.

If access to health care is considered a human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?

We have to design a health delivery system by actually talking to people and asking, 'What would make this service better for you?' As soon as you start asking, you get a flood of answers.

The only way to do the human rights thing is to do the right thing medically.

But as for activism, my parents did what they could, given the constraints, but were never involved in the causes I think of when I think of activists.

In fact, it seems to me that making strategic alliances across national borders in order to treat HIV among the world's poor is one of the last great hopes of solidarity across a widening divide.

We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it is not worth it. So we fight the long defeat.