Antropologia no campo da saúde global

in this article, i explore the limits of magic-bullet approaches to global health problems and show how people-centered initiatives challenge economic and human rights orthodoxies and enlarge our sense of what is socially possible and desirable. i draw from my long-term ethnographic study of the brazilian therapeutic response to hiv/aids and its repercussions through government, markets, health systems and personal lives. i also report on a new comparative project on the aftermath of large-scale pharmaceutical interventions in resource-poor settings. attending to both larger processes and to human singularities, the article opens a critical window into the values and the real-life outcomes of contemporary pharmaceutical and humanitarian interventions. as i critique institutional evidence-making practices i also reconsider anthropology and medicine's notions of responsibility and care.