Today’s polarized politics demand we treat Anthony Fauci like a hero or a villain. But he was something far more banal: a committed public servant who made serious errors of judgment, denting the country’s trust in public health in the process.
From HIV/AIDS to COVID-19, the pharmaceutical industry has made obscene profits by exploiting public research and denying lifesaving medication to poor countries. Building a fairer system of medicine production means breaking Big Pharma’s power.
The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged influential figures like Gordon Brown and Tony Blair to press for new structures of global governance. But the system they have in mind won’t be democratic. We need a radically democratic world government.
Patents were once seen as a temporary reward for inventors. Now, as novelist Cory Doctorow tells Jacobin, they've become supposedly inviolable "intellectual property" rights that simply enrich people like Bill Gates.
Determined to undermine the US pandemic response, the Right is opposing vaccine mandates on the grounds that they’re an authoritarian power grab. Don’t be fooled: up until a few months ago, they backed every civil liberties–shredding measure under the sun.
Pfizer is projected to rake in more than $50 billion from its COVID medicines this year. It’s a symbol of the drastic inequality created by a for-profit approach to global health.
Joe Biden and many of his appointees have links to drug companies trying to delay and weaken the COVID vaccine patent waiver he’s now promising to negotiate.
We talk to two public health experts about America's COVID-19 response and how poor households have borne a disproportionate share of the pandemic's hardship. We need to urgently fight for a more just society.
The horrific COVID crisis in India isn’t just the result of rich countries’ criminal hoarding of vaccines and intellectual property — it’s the fault of Narendra Modi’s far-right government, which has prioritized private profits over public health.
Over the past few months, pharma giants like Pfizer and Moderna have become household names and fodder for affectionate memes. But their prominence reflects how the market has cannibalized science and public health during a global crisis. Big pharma still is not your friend.
The Australian far right has joined forces with New Age spiritualists, snake-oil salesmen, and wellness gurus to take advantage of social alienation caused by the pandemic. Despite the new branding, their anti-union, anti-working-class politics remain the same.
International talks aimed at creating a treaty to prevent another COVID-19 catastrophe are nearing collapse. This impasse is due to the refusal of countries such as the US, Canada, and Germany to compromise on Big Pharma’s intellectual property rights.
Movies depicting the spread of disease have become a well-established genre and helped frame our understanding of the real-life COVID-19 pandemic. The spirit of these films increasingly reflects the despair and atomization of neoliberal capitalism.
President Biden came into office promising to lead a robust effort to vanquish coronavirus. So far, he has failed.
One of the best ways Joe Biden could have attacked the pandemic and boosted the US's vaccination rate would have been to fight for Medicare for All, or at least a public option. He refused to do so.
The Chicago Teachers Union is locked in a standoff with the mayor as teachers defy orders to return to in-person teaching. If the mayor doesn't back down, she'll have a big fight on her hands — one that could look like the 2019 CTU strike that lasted fifteen days.
The US has never seriously considered far-reaching responses to the coronavirus pandemic like a national lockdown or a universal basic income that would allow people to stay at home without immiseration. The result: unnecessary mass deaths, with more on the way.
No one expected Joe Biden to rein in US empire. But after 100 days, he’s been terrible even on his own terms — failing to reenter the Iran nuclear deal, coddling authoritarian leaders like Mohammed bin Salman, and looking on as countries like India are pummeled by the COVID-19 crisis.
The conditions in child migrant detention facilities aren’t just cruelly overcrowded and holding kids for far longer than is legal or moral — they’re also a perfect storm for a major outbreak in infectious diseases, including COVID-19.
Joe Biden’s top domestic policy adviser, Susan Rice, owns a big stake in a company whose pipeline was just backed by the White House. It’s just an ordinary day in a world where the superrich control both the economy and the government.