A current New York Times Magazine article on Jeffrey Sachs, "Spend $150 Billion per Year to Cure World Poverty, reflects why Sachs' role in combating AIDS and poverty is so important: he argues for an entirely new pardigm. It isn't sufficient to improve programs at the margins -- we need a major new commitment for global assistance. Fortunately, he has the energy, intelligence and clout to be taken as seriously in the pursuit of this new paradigm as anyone could be.

He spends a great deal of time debunking conventional wisdom. For example, from the magazine:

The idea that African failure is due to African poor governance is one of the great myths of our time,'' Sachs began, addressing a packed hall. ''They can't get out of the hole on their own. If we don't take a different approach, we will not only see certain collapse; we will see a catastrophic downward spiral of violence."

While Sachs' calls for increased resources often sound quaintly unrealistic, it is noteworthy that he is calling for no more than donor countries have already established as spending targets: .7% of GNP (including as recently as 2002 at the Monterrey Consensus). Five European countries currently meet that goal. The US falls short at .2% GNP, lowest of donor countries.