I've been asked a lot for my view on American health care. Well, 'it would be a good idea,' to quote Gandhi.

I think we will see better vaccines within the next 15 years, but I'm not a scientist and am focused on the short-term - what will happen in the interim.

I recommend the same therapies for all humans with HIV. There is no reason to believe that physiologic responses to therapy will vary across lines of class, culture, race or nationality.

At the same time, it is obvious that clinicians in Haiti are faced with different, and, in fact, greater, challenges when attempting to treat complications of HIV disease.

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.

If you look just at the decades after 1934, you know it's hard to point to really inspired and positive support from outside of Haiti, to Haiti, and much easier to point to either small-minded or downright mean-spirited policies.

You can't have public health without working with the public sector. You can't have public education without working with the public sector in education.