Dr. Jim Muller in the Boston Globe

I was delighted to read the front page article in yesterday’s Boston Globe about Jim Muller, a good friend of mine, regarding the importance of US-Russian cooperation to prevent nuclear war. Jim is a cardiologist and researcher who also speaks fluent Russian and has spent decades working against nuclear weapons. (In 2018 I was a co-author of an op-ed in the Boston Globe with Jim and Dr. John Pastore, another cardiologist and advocate for the abolition of these weapons).

Despite his incredible life experiences and Nobel Prize, Jim is humble. He genuinely wants a world free of the nuclear threat and argues that cooperation between the US and Russia on health issues is the best way to make that happen. For example, there already exists a collaboration between Harvard Medical School and Russian tuberculosis experts. Why couldn’t this be grown into a full Medical Education Partnership Initiative, as has been done in Mozambique and elsewhere? It seems like preventing nuclear war should be our top global health priority, and Jim has pointed us in the right direction. Please contact me if you have interest in collaborating with us on this work.

In other news, Melissa Calica and I, from the Longwood Chorus, joined Lisa Wong, Martha Vedrine, Adetomiwa Victor Owoseni, and Joia Mukherjee to sing at the candlelight vigil for Paul Farmer. The gathering was held in the frigid cold on the Harvard Medical School quad last night. It was a powerful service, and besides the choral number (we sang “Soon and very soon”), a Longwood Symphony string quartet, and folk music, we enjoyed the remarks delivered by Harvard School of Public Health Dean Michelle Williams.

Finally, regarding Paul Farmer, it’s worth reading the piece by Mosoka Fallah and Eric Reinhart in the Lancet, Apartheid Logic in Global Health. Dr. Reinhart also wrote another important piece in 2021, Medicine for the People.

The bottom line is despite the devastating war in Ukraine, there remains hope for health and healing. But for this hope to be realized, each of us must do our part and speak out, and sing for peace and justice.

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