Farmer, who holds a doctorate in medical anthropology, focused his remarks on globalization and its consequences on health care in poor countries.
"I want to argue with some examples that the primary human rights problem for you and your generation is social and economic rights," he said.
Farmer presented slides that showed a growing gap between the world's haves and have-nots and a similar disparity between how many patients survive curable diseases in rich and poor countries.
"To use sociological terms, the shafted have always done worse," he said. "The trend is that things are getting worse in terms of equity."
But Farmer added, "People are ready and willing to fight back."
Farmer, a founder of the Boston-based non-governmental organization Partners in Health, criticized many of the world's global health care initiatives for implementing policies that do not work.
"There's an old joke: the operation was a success, but the patient died," he said. Farmer said that today's analogue for health care in poor countries is, "It was managerial success but a clinical failure."
One of the most telling instances of a large-scale clinical failure, according to Farmer, is the World Health Organization's DOTS strategy.
DOTS, which stands for "Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course strategy," has been used in Russian prisons to treat people with MDR-TB, a curable strain of tuberculosis resistant to "first line drugs," the medicines most commonly used to treat tuberculosis.
Because prisoners were given the short-course strategy, there was only a five percent success rate, Farmer said.
Farmer added that when he began to criticize DOTS, he originally met with resistance.
Eventually, Farmer said that he was told that financial limitations were the real reason MDR-TB was not being treated properly in poor countries. But Farmer discovered that many of the necessary drugs were off-patent, which should have made them cheaper than usual.
Farmer began to implement a strategy called DOTS Plus (the same treatment with a new name) in his clinics in Haiti and Peru using the cheap, off-patent drugs. He said that this program resulted in a cure rate of 85 percent.
Providing similar, high-quality health care for the world's poor, including those suffering from the AIDS pandemic, will be one of the greatest human rights challenges of the 21st century, Farmer said. Farmer's health care-centered human rights agenda calls for "new research agencies, a focus on health and healing, a broader educational mandate and more resources."
Farmer's speech was met with enthusiasm by students. "It was certainly refreshing to hear academics involved in social justice ... He was very honest and blunt about what was going on," said Maadi Fuller '01.
During the question and answer part of his talk, Farmer told students that they could get involved in the global health care movement. "You have access to all these tools. So lay out the mechanism. Ask in each of these settings where there is something of value that can either be supported or protected," he said.
Farmer's talk was the inaugural Schwemm Fund lecture, supported by Jack Schwemm '56 and his wife Nancy. The fund's purpose is to bring to campus "articulate scholars, intellectuals, and public figures who reason and act with moral purpose and whose actions are rooted in responsibility and love," according to Coordinator for Religious Life Reverend Paul Sorrentino, who oversees the Schwemm Fund.
"Clearly, Dr. Farmer is an excellent example of Jack Schwemm's 'twin virtues' of compassion and responsibility with regard to society. He has made the difficult sort of life decisions that have placed the needs of others ahead of his own comfort and success," said Sorrentino.
The next Schwemm Fund lecture will be given in the fall by Harvard psychologist Robert Coles.