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Coalition for Patient Privacy

January 21, 2009

Honorable Charles B. Rangel
Chairman
House Committee on Ways and Means
1102 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Honorable Henry A. Waxman
Chairman
House Committee on Energy & Commerce
2125 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Honorable David Camp
Ranking Member
House Committee on Ways & Means
341 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Honorable Joe Barton
Ranking Member
House Committee on Energy & Commerce
2109 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Honorable Pete Stark
Chairman, Health Subcommittee
House Committee on Ways & Means
239 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Honorable Frank Pallone, Jr.
hairman, Health Subcommittee
House Commitee on Energy & Commerce
237 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Honorable Wally Herger
Ranking Member, Health Subcommittee
House Committee on Ways & Means
242 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Honorable Nathan Deal
Ranking Member, Health Subcommitee
House Committee on Energy & Commerce
2133 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Honorable John Dingell
Chair Emeritus
House Committee on Energy & Commerce
2328 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressmen:

You have taken critical steps to protect Americans’ jobs and opportunities with the privacy protections incorporated into the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, or “HITECH Act”.   This legislation addresses many of the issues that the Coalition for Patient Privacy, representing millions of Americans, brought to your attention (letter and signatures attached).  We stand ready to fight with you to protect consumers and ensure that our most intimate information, our health records, is only used to improve our health. 

Ensuring privacy results in two important outcomes. 

First, ensuring privacy protects employees at a time when over eleven million Americans are unemployed.  The last place anyone wants to be is in the “Unemployable” or “Uninsurable” lines; unfortunately, the two are often connected. Our sensitive health data should never be used to put us in either category.  People should be hired based on whether they can do what is required, not on employers’ fears that they cannot do good work because of a diagnosis, a medicine they take, their DNA or a genetic test.  Thirty five percent of Fortune 500 companies admitted to looking at employee’s health records before making hiring and promotion decisions.[1] This pre-hiring review of potential employees is inappropriate and in some cases illegal.

Second, privacy is the key to implementing a successful health IT system Americans trust. We all want to innovate and improve health care.  But without privacy, our system will crash as would any computer system with a persistent and chronic virus.  If we fail to ensure privacy and engender trust Americans will avoid participation or worse, avoid care altogether and undoubtedly misrepresent their medical histories.

The HITECH Act ensures that patient protections trump profit, and that increased accountability and transparency follow the health IT provisions in the economic stimulus.

By far the most important provision in the HITECH Act is the prohibition on the sale of protected health information (SEC. 4405(e)).  Personal health information should not be sold and shared as a typical commodity.  Health information is different; it is extremely sensitive and can directly impact jobs, credit, and insurance coverage.  It is critical to put a stop to current data sales and misuse, but also to prevent the development of future businesses that sell personal health information as a commodity while doing nothing to improve Americans’ health.

In addition, we strongly support the improved enforcement provisions of the bill.  Periodic audits, state attorneys general enforcement, a compensation scheme for privacy victims and applying penalties to business associates are essential.  The breach notification provision is likewise very strong. 

It is critical that taxpayer dollars go only to funding systems that are capable of segmenting specific and sensitive information.  Requiring the HIT Policy Committee to make recommendations is a positive step.  Previous language requiring the National Coordinator to ensure segmentation capabilities would be a stronger protection.

Expanding our right to obtain audit trails of the uses of our health information to include treatment, payment and health care operations is another important improvement.  We encourage you to require business associates to maintain audit trails as well as covered entities and shorten the timeframe for this provision to go into effect. 

The HITECH Act provides a more consumer-friendly structure for the HIT Policy and Standards Committees.  We hope the less prescriptive membership structure for these committees will allow for greater consumer participation.  We applaud the efforts to increase participation by providing funding for consumer advocacy groups and not for profit entities that work in the public interest.  We also support the provision to study health technology that can be used to meet the needs of seniors and individuals with disabilities. 

We continue to advocate that our right to health information privacy be explicitly reaffirmed in statute.  Furthermore, Congress can do more to ensure Americans have greater control over the uses of their health information.  We are supportive of the measure directing the Secretary to narrow the definition of health care operations, though we would prefer to see those kinds of limitations put in statute.

A January 18, 2009 New York Times article clearly described the challenge we face: we must protect the consumer over special interests.[2]  We should not continue to allow business as usual when it harms the American public.  Thank you for the tremendous work and collaborative efforts of your respective committees.  The HITECH Act is truly a giant step forward in protecting privacy and promoting health IT.  We are united in our strong support for your common sense protections.

Sincerely,

The Coalition for Patient Privacy

Alliance for Patient Safety

American Association for People with Disabilities

Clinical Social Work Association

Fairfax County Privacy Council

Health Administration Responsibility Project, Inc.

Just Health

The Multiracial Activist

National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers

Patient Privacy Rights

Private Citizen, Inc.

Tolven

Encl.    Coalition for Patient Privacy letter to Congress 1/14/09

cc:        U.S. House of Representatives

For additional information please contact:

Ashley Katz

Relevant Discussion:

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The Multiracial Activist
January 20, 2009
From the Editor:

As this is not a partisan political posting, I'd appreciate it if readers stayed on point with the topic at hand.  Partisan political comments are considered off-topic and will be deleted without further consideration.  Thank you.

I decided to skip the swearing-in ceremony and waited until noon to go to the city for the parade.  We listened to it on XM Radio on the way to the Metro station.  Since moving here in September of 1992, I've witnessed both of Bill Clinton's inaugurations and the first one for Bush, so I knew what to expect with regard to crowds and navigation of same.  I wanted to be there, but I didn't need to be there for the entire day given I expected the Metro system to be a mess.  Not a mess like The Mall after a concert.  No, a mess like trying to navigate the Gallery Place/Chinatown station on a Capitals game night multiplied by ten thousand.  Since my wife and son went with me, I felt all day long in that cold with that mass of humanity was just too much.  

We arrived around 1:00 pm and stood in line near a security checkpoint across the street from the grandstand area not too far from Metro Center, the National Press Club Building and the Warner Theatre.  Once the gates were open and people were allowed through the security checkpoint to the parade route, I began to look for a decent spot to watch the parade.  After standing around and trying out different vantage points, we lucked out with some great seats in the bleachers right across from the grandstand after standing in line for about 30 minutes.  The police started to let anyone, ticketed or not, into the stands once the parade was ready to begin.

C-c-c-c-c-old. My frostbite had frostbite.  We decided to stay until after Obama's limo passed us by.  I would have liked to stay longer as a high school marching band from the town next to my hometown was in the parade.  I went to high school with some of those kids' parents.  It was just too cold to wait any longer as the parade got started late and it was starting to get dark.

As a consequence of my active duty service in the Marine Corps, my civil liberties work and employment in government relations with DC area trade associations, I've been fortunate to witness several historic events in my short 38 years.  I was extremely excited that my son was able to attend this with me.  At eleven years old, my multiracial son can only partially grasp the magnitude of what he witnessed today in a multiracial man like him being sworn in as President of the United States.  It will click sometime later and he'll be glad he was there today to witness a major piece of American history in the moment.

That said, the election and presidency of Barack Obama is not the end of racism or skin color collectivism in the United States.  However, it is a major milestone on the journey to that destination.  A black-identified biracial man was elected President of the United States.  The significance of this event should not be understated.  His ascendancy to the White House was not due to his skin color, but through his political skill, charisma and a little luck - which is always helpful in the best of campaigns.

Obama's status as a young, charismatic and skilled rising star in the opposition party of one of the most unpopular chief executives in U.S. history did not hurt things.  Further, possessing the tenacity to survive a grueling battle with serious adversaries within his own party and the major opposing party who were not unwilling to resort to the worst of gutter tactics in order to achieve a victory didn't hurt his chances.  In short, he won through political skill, not by playing the race card, appealing to "white guilt" or via other divisive tactics.  So, political views aside, let's acknowledge it for what it is - progress with regard to racial views in the United States.

I don't know what the next move is, but I do know this is not the endgame.  There is much work left to do...

James Landrith is the editor and publisher of The Multiracial Activist and The Abolitionist Examiner , two cyber-rags dedicated to coloring between the lines and freedom from oppressive racial categorization. Landrith can be reached by email at: editor AT multiracial DOT com This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it or at his personal website/blog .

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The Multiracial Activist
January 20, 2009
From the Editor:

Given that today we are inaugurating the first multiracial President in the history of the United States, I found it fitting to probe the minds of some of the authors, community, organization and activist leaders within the multiracial community.  I wanted to know their general reaction to the election results, their opinions on the impact of a biracial President on the multiracial movement and how President Obama’s historic election to the highest office in the land will affect race relations going forward.

I cast a wide net to ensure varied political and social perspectives were represented in the responses.  Those who answered the call or were able to participate include (in alphabetical order):

• Charles Michael Byrd is author of “The Bhagavad-gita in Black and White: From Mulatto Pride to Krishna Consciousness” and also founded, edited and published Interracial Voice. (http://www.interracialvoice.com/)
• Lise Funderberg has authored several books.  In addition, her articles, essays and reviews have appeared widely in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, Salon, Newsday, and many other publications. (http://www.lisefunderburg.com/)
• Kevin R. Johnson is the Dean, Professor of Law and Chicana/o Studies, and the Mabie-Apallas Public Interest Law Chair at the University of California at Davis in addition to authoring several books on multiracial identity. (http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Johnson/)
• A.D. Powell is an author and columnist for Interracial Voice and The Multiracial Activist. (http://backintyme.com/adpowell/)
• Frank W. Sweet is an historian, author and was a frequent contributor to Interracial Voice. (http://backintyme.com/publishing.php)
• Rebecca Walker is a best-selling author, an acclaimed speaker and teacher, and an award-winning visionary and activist. (http://www.rebeccawalker.com/).  With her kind permission, Rebecca’s comments are excerpted from her blog .

Your reaction (or organization) to the election results?

Charles Michael Byrd:

I voted for John McCain because he was the most experienced and most qualified. That said, he ran against a candidate of historical significance who skillfully linked the Arizona Senator to an unpopular sitting President. Lingering opposition to the Iraq war as well as the faltering economy were the other reasons, particularly the latter, that sealed McCain’s doom.

Lise Funderberg:

I was thrilled for all sorts of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with his--or my--being biracial.

Kevin R. Johnson:

I am very pleased by the presidential election results.  Senator Obama ran a masterful campaign and the vote turned out as expected.  The so-called "Bradley effect" never became a reality in election 2008.  Both candidates offered conciliatory speeches to end the evening.

A.D. Powell:

My reaction to the election of Barack Obama is mixed.  I really despised the Bush regime and I considered the McCain/Palin ticket to be a continuation of that kind of discredited government.  I definitely did NOT want the Republicans back in the White House.  On the other hand, I see in Obama's victory a certain danger to those who oppose forced racial classification and wish to promote the legitimation of multiracial identities and racial ambiguity.  Why?  Too many of the black-identified members of the political and intellectual elite and their "white" allies will probably be emboldened to try and silence us forever (I have already seen some of this in Amazon.com's censorship of book reviewers known to criticize forced black identity) because their Democratic comrades now rule the roost. 

On the other hand, I have been struck by the large number of "white" Americans who have openly asked why Obama is "black" when he is half white and was reared by white relatives in a totally non-black environment.  "Mixed race" is no longer an abstraction to growing numbers of "whites."  They may not be interracially married themselves, but they are the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. of mixed-race people.  They see their relatives, who are usually white women and often single mothers, pour all of their love and resources into their biracial children (just as Obama's mother and grandmother did).  They are far less afraid to say that there is no logic in claiming that those children are totally "black" or "African American" and not entitled to claim their white parents' "race" and ethnicity.

Frank W. Sweet:

My reaction to the election is relief that it is over. Presidential campaigns go on much too long. The hundreds of millions of dollars spent in advertising intrudes into and distracts from our ordinary day-to-day activities.

 Rebecca Walker:

We won. All of us. Yes. We. Did. (from blog entry )

What do you believe will be the impact of a biracial President on the future of the multiracial movement?

Charles Michael Byrd:

Does the movement that ceded control of multiracial discourse to civil rights organizations still exist? I have my doubts. What came to be known as the multiracial movement acquiesced to demands of the aforementioned organizations to define the mixed community as a series of sub-groups, subsets or sub-cultures of the larger minority groups – e.g. multiracial blacks and multiracial Asians but never simply multiracial without the politically correct modifier or, perish the thought, multiracial white.

Lise Funderberg:

I think his visibility will further normalize the notion of a multiracial identity in our society. The novelist Paule Marshall once said that "once you see yourself truthfully depicted, you have a sense of your right to be in the world." She wasn't speaking about mixed-race people, but I've always thought the sentiment applies to us as well, especially since our culture has historically functioned on the principle of hypodescent, i.e., that one component of a person's background will necessarily trump the other components. In my view, President-elect Obama projects an ease and affection towards his mixed-race heritage, even as he claims an identity as a black man. I know that some people feel you can't do both, but I believe in the absolute hegemony of self-identification, and so I accept that this is the truth of who he is.

Obama's positive association with all of his roots goes a long way to countering the tragic mulatto stereotypes that have long-influenced public opinion.

Kevin R. Johnson:

This is hard to tell.  Part of my uncertainty is that Senator Obama ordinarily is publically identified as an African American rather than a biracial or multiracial person.

A.D. Powell:

I propose that the multiracial movement see the election of Obama as an opportunity to reach out to more ordinary "white" Americans with the question "Why is Obama "black" when he is equally "white"?  I propose that we contrast Obama with the late New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard.  Obama was born into  and reared in a Hawaii-based white-identified family and had no ties of blood or culture to the native "African American" community.  Broyard was born in New Orleans to a Creole family falsely labeled as "Negro" by the racist government of Louisiana, which was determined to subject its mixed-race Creole population to a documentary genocide of forced assimilation into the "black" Anglo population/caste.  Obama left Hawaii with the intention, according to his autobiography, of finding a "racial community" of people who looked like himself.  Broyard, whose family moved to New York City when he was a small child, refused to self-police himself and accept a "Negro" or "colored" classification.  In the free environment of New York, he chose to be identified as white.  Indeed, his parents had themselves moved back and forth across the color line because they also had European phenotypes.  Obama married a woman "blacker" than himself and produced two children who look "black" to most Americans.  Broyard married a woman "whiter" than himself (Norwegian-American) and produced two children who look totally white to most Americans.  Why is Obama praised for moving toward "blackness" while Broyard is demonized by the black and white liberal intellectual elites for moving toward "whiteness"?  How about some equal rights here?  I would be far more impressed by an open defense of Broyard's whiteness than I am by Obama's election.  White racism has always rested on the assumption of white racial purity.  Obama claims that he is "black" because he "looks black."  Why wasn't Broyard "white" because he "looked white"?  The Obama/Broyard comparison would require open criticism of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (foremost advocate of the "one drop rule" in the U.S. who first "outed" Broyard as a so-called "light-skinned black") and Anatole's daughter Bliss Broyard (who has openly sided with Gates and denounced her father as "black").  This is a chance to strike at the "one drop rule" and we should not miss it.  The fact that Obama, Gates and Bliss Broyard are already all over the media should make the task easier.

Frank W. Sweet:

Obama's impact on the multiracial movement depends upon his own feelings about freedom of choice of ethnic self-identity. But his feelings are impossible to gauge.

Early in the campaign, his public persona was zealously hyper-black.

He told CBS that he was Black only, not "biracial," and that he had been forced into this position by White people. He refused even to discuss his White relatives. He defended Wright's insane rantings as representing the will of the Black community and said he could no more distance himself from them than from his own family.

The day after he won the nomination he suddenly became color-blind.

He talked only about his White relatives. His press releases suddenly switched to referring to him as "part Black" or "mixed." He refused to discuss the excesses of zealously hyper-Black political leaders.

I have no idea which persona is the "real" Obama, or even if there is any substance behind the chameleon-like facade. He seems willing to embrace whatever position is strategically useful at any given moment.  Nevertheless, there are far more U.S. voters who fear freedom of ethnic-identity choice than who support it. Hence, I would expect the new president to come out strongly against multiracialism.

Rebecca Walker:

Are ideas about race changing? I think they obviously are. Do I think these ideas are going to continue to change until we reach the point of recognizing the absurdity of making conclusions about someone based on indicators as arbitrary as the color of their skin? Yes, I do. Do I have any idea how long these changes will take to manifest globally? No I don't.

But honestly, and this one of the things that impresses me most about Obama's approach, there is not a whole lot of time to get everyone on the same page about this--at this point in the game, shifting the dominant discourse to species survival is critical. The language for that has yet to be crafted, but we know it includes concepts like balance, sustainability, peaceful co-existence, ending slavery and hunger and genocide based on any criteria, be it gender, race, religion, language, economic status, etc.

He gets, perhaps because he is "mixed race" or "multiracial" or "half and half" and has had to write his own identity script, that human potential is vast. We are, at least in our minds, what we believe ourselves to be, and because of human imagination, the possibilities are great. It is important to note that many who do not experience or define themselves as "multiracial" also have this understanding:

We have to write a new story. 

How the future of race relations in the United States will be affected by a black-identified biracial President?

Charles Michael Byrd:

That depends on just how directly President Obama chooses to address the issue. Will he continue to speak to Americans primarily as a black President who just happens to be half white or will he engage the citizenry as a multiracial President that many people, because of this country’s longstanding one-drop rule, identify as black? Will he speak to the issue of most Americans being racially mixed to some degree, which will hopefully begin bringing people closer together, or will he speak solely from the perspective of a black-identified biracial, a stance that perpetuates the black/white racial dichotomy in this country? Much depends on just how necessary Obama views the need for radically changing the racial paradigm in America.

Will he appoint Supreme Court justices inclined to rule in favor of affirmative action programs and other race-based policies that demand the continuation of racial classification? Probably. Would he support the right of a person to opt out of filling in a racial designation on the decennial census, confidently leaving the race box blank knowing that no government bureaucrat would fill it in later? Probably not. We’ll just have to wait and see.

For anyone interested, I discuss all of these issues in my book “The Bhagavad-Gita in Black and White: From Mulatto Pride to Krishna Consciousness” available on Amazon.com.

Lise Funderberg:

I see great possibility for progress in racial attitudes, among all contingents, because Obama acts with an attitude of inclusivity rather than divisiveness. Is this a result of his biracial experience or simply that he is a smart, smart man? I don't know the answer to that, but I say whatever works, works.

Kevin R. Johnson:

Senator Obama has a richly diverse family history, racially, economically, and otherwise.  Just look at the pictures of his mother, father, grandparents, half-sister, and their families to get a sense visually of that diversity.  Senator Obama's ascendancy to the presidency is likely to bring to light for many Americans the deep complexities of race, national origin, and class in the united states.

Frank W. Sweet:

I doubt that Obama will have any impact on race relations in the United States, despite his self-identifying as Black. U.S. attitudes towards racial classification change very slowly, on the scale of centuries. Such attitudes are learned in infancy, along with language, and are seldom within volitional control in adulthood.

A.D. Powell:

No matter how much Obama might call himself "black," his white ancestry and white upbringing are too well known to be denied.  "White" Americans are already asking questions.  We must encourage them to do so and point out that the denial of freedom of racial/ethnic identity and the abuse of black political power in support of that denial affects their own families, now and/or in the future.

Rebecca Walker:

It was illegal for my parents to marry because they were of different "races," today a "mixed race" man is President. 

The story to glean here is not necessarily one of progress, but of how quickly motivated human beings can change the story, flip the script, change the world. 

At this point, it seems we are moving toward a "post-race" future. Whether that future will be the utopia many imagine it to be is another story altogether. 

What I hope is that my grandchildren have clean water and air, and edible, non-toxic food to eat. I hope they are not in mass prisons, protracted wars, or victims of hypercapitalist ideologies. Unless the color of their skin is a determining factor in the above, whether they think of themselves as a "race" is fairly irrelevant. 

Culture is created everyday. It's what we as human beings do: make meaning out of phenomena. My hope, as we move into the future is that we can make meaning that, to borrow a cliche, benefits the many and not just a few. This, more than a racial identity, is what I try to pass on to my son.

If notions of race need to be jettisoned in order for that to happen, great. If people need to embrace ideas of race in the extreme in order for it to happen, fine. The main thing is for it to happen, and to avoid letting the discourse of race itself keep us from the change we need.

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Welcome to Washington 
The Abolitionist Examiner - January 14, 2009
Alvaro Vargas Llosa

WASHINGTON—The capital of the United States is flooded with visitors for the presidential inauguration. Mention of this city sometimes evokes the wildest prejudices (including the ridiculous notion that America’s Founding Fathers were cannibals, courtesy of the “Masters of Horror” TV series!). So, what is life really like here?

Before I came to live in Washington, I was convinced that since more than one in four residents work for the government, the District of Columbia was a socialist republic. I am not entirely sure it is not, but my personal impression is that nothing makes people more cynical about government than working for it. I have never heard a libertarian speak about the futility of most government departments the way American and foreign officials often do in restaurants or bars on Capitol Hill, on K Street—the center of the lobbying industry—in Georgetown or even at the Fish Wharf.

This is the one silver lining in the gathering storm of increased government power caused by the current recession. In the wake of the collapse of collateralized debt obligations and credit-default swaps, the government basically nationalized part of the financial services industry. A running joke in Washington used to be that the separation of powers was not the balance between the three branches of government but between Wall Street, where securities were traded, and Washington, where laws were traded. Now both are traded in Washington. As the money supply and fiscal expenditure expand astronomically in response to the recession, the one mitigating circumstance is that Washingtonians, who will implement many of the policies, seem to me to be deep down mistrustful of their main industry—the government.

I also believed, before coming to D.C., that Washington was a cultural bubble. Actually, it is a cultural flux. Even fierce nationalists are open-minded in Washington: They trade with the rest of the world, interact with immigrants, dine in ethnic restaurants, watch foreign films and occasionally say words in European languages. If Joe the Plumber—the ambassador of conservative, small-town America—came to Washington, he would probably volunteer for the French Foreign Legion!

Another misconception about Washington is that it is secretive. We all know, of course, how much official information is leaked in this city. But until my first encounter with a CIA spook in a hotel across the Potomac, I had no idea that the real business of Washington’s intelligence community is boasting, not hiding. As for the presence of spies on every street corner, for most of us the CIA is a highway directional sign we pass on the way to shop at a suburban mall (when we could afford to shop, that is).

Washington’s layout—a reflection of Pierre L’Enfant’s Baroque style—also helps to dilute the effect of the bureaucracy on the local population. The open spaces, the long avenues and the grid-like order might be the result of central planning, but everything is spread out in such a way that one can breathe comfortably. George Washington’s choice of farmland and hills filled with trees bordering the Potomac proved prescient: D.C.’s rural-like aura helps mitigate its political gravitas.

Foreigners think of America as a country without history. The charge is absurd since the colonizers were themselves children of the ages. And Washington, of course, is infused with history. Here the past is not only an architectural presence in the form of monuments, or an industry that thrives on tourism and the memory of political and judicial decisions that shaped the nation. It is also a spirit. One is forever expecting to meet Thomas Jefferson around the corner, perhaps coming out of Bartleby’s used-book store on 29th Street NW.

Washington was the brainchild of the Founding Fathers, the greatest generation of political minds the world has known. The result of an intense negotiation between Northerners and Southerners, D.C. was always at the heart of the racial question. Slavery was abolished here earlier than in the Southern states, it welcomed freed slaves from the South, and desegregation happened here before it did in neighboring Virginia—although white flight was an unfortunate response.

Washington was also a theater of the civil rights conflict. At Ben’s Chili Bowl in the U Street corridor, where Barack Obama visited last weekend, one can hear people reminisce about the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

Let’s hope that the visitors who are flocking to D.C. for Obama’s inauguration take some of this culture and history away with them when they leave town.

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Alvaro Vargas Llosa
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Alvaro Vargas Llosa is Senior Fellow of The Center on Global Prosperity at The Independent Institute. He is a native of Peru and received his B.S.C. in international history from the London School of Economics. His weekly column is syndicated worldwide by the Washington Post Writers Group, and his Independent Institute books include Lessons From the Poor: Triumph of the Entrepreneurial Spirit, The Che Guevara Myth: And the Future of Liberty, and Liberty for Latin America. 

Full Biography and Recent Publications

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(c) 2009, The Washington Post Writers Group

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New from Alvaro Vargas Llosa! The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty Nearly four decades after his death, the legend of Che Guevara has grown worldwide. In this new book, Alvaro Vargas Llosa separates myth from reality and shows that Che’s ideals re-hashed centralized power—long the major source of suffering and misery for the poor.Learn More »»

 

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