Health

Why I Provide Abortions

My patients and I don’t use words like “choice” or “viability.”

What Health Care Should Be

Physicians have been fighting for health justice for decades. To succeed, we need practical models for collectively remaking our systems of care.

Abortion Is a Public Good

The right to reproductive health and agency is a compelling state interest.

The Inescapable Dilemma of Infectious Disease

Our mastery over microbes is only a few decades old. It is also far more precarious than we imagine.

The Long-Term Safety Argument over COVID-19 Vaccines

Concerns about long-term side effects have helped fuel vaccine hesitancy. An immunologist explains why we can be confident in vaccine safety.

To Say Goodbye

A veteran AIDS activist looks back on the 1990s.

Hospitals Need More Than Vaccine Mandates

If we want to address vaccine hesitancy in the health care system, we must treat its lowest paid workers better.

Here Come the Robot Nurses

The pandemic increased demand and possibilities for automating care, but doing so may deliver racist stereotypes and unemployment for women of color.

Beyond Choice

Liberalism cannot simply be extended to the uterus. Reproductive justice requires a vision of the social body.

Our Insurance Dystopia

Private insurance companies have long dominated the provision of social security in the United States, but resistance is growing.

No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies

The U.S. Department of Defense is ramping up the militarization of Guam. If we hope to withstand the forces of predatory global capitalism, we need to begin articulating alternatives.

Medicine for the People

As more and more doctors awaken to the political determinants of health, the U.S. medical profession needs a deeper vision for the ethical meanings of care.

An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine

Colorblind solutions have failed to achieve racial equity in health care. We need both federal reparations and real institutional accountability.

Poisoning Tallevast

First, segregation blocked this Florida community from equal education and other public goods. Then the military–industrial complex sickened residents and destroyed their property.

The Logic of Eugenics Still Haunts Virginia

Elizabeth Catte’s new book examines how Virginia progressives believed the forced sterilization of poor whites would pave the way to a bright future—and how their legacy endures in national parks and prisons.

Medicine’s Machine Learning Problem

As Big Data tools reshape health care, biased datasets and unaccountable algorithms threaten to further disempower patients.

Caring in Viral Times

Amid widespread indifference toward the most vulnerable, even small acts of kindness can make a difference.

Racism and Respiration

COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on Black communities is just one of many respiratory inequities shaped by systemic racism.

Our Vaccine Infrastructure Needs a Radical Overhaul

We must reimagine how to make life-saving vaccines available to everyone.

From the Editor: Thinking in a Pandemic

COVID-19 is not just a public health crisis. It is also a crisis of public reason.

How Early Modern Empire Changed Medicine

Global trade, enslaved labor, and colonial warfare created demands for medicines that would work for anyone, anywhere. That pressure to view patients as interchangeable remains with us today.

The Economic Case for a People’s Vaccine

Ensuring a COVID-19 vaccine is available to all makes both moral and economic sense.

The Angel of History

Pestilence and plague have often prompted waves of apocalyptic thinking, calling into question the steady march of progress in human history.

What’s Next for Abortion Law?

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling is only the latest twist in the convoluted legal history of women’s reproductive rights. The future looks no less partisan.

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