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.

There is nothing wrong with underlining personal agency, but there is something unfair about using personal responsibility as a basis for assigning blame while simultaneously denying those who are being blamed the opportunity to exert agency in their lives

The poorest parts of the world are by and large the places in which one can best view the worst of medicine and not because doctors in these countries have different ideas about what constitutes modern medicine. It's the system and its limitations that are to blame.

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.

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

Again, conventional Catholicism does not much appeal to me.

The world is full of miserable places. One way of living comfortably is not to think about them or, when you do, to send money