As policymakers debate the right response to COVID-19, they must take seriously the harms of pandemic policies, not just their benefits.

With few restrictions and no tracing of the disease’s spread, the government is relying upon Swedish character and traditions to see it through the pandemic.

COVID-19 has revealed a contest between two competing philosophies of scientific knowledge. To manage the crisis, we must draw on both.

Boston Review talks with Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton about COVID-19, the relationship between culture, financial hardship, and health, and why capitalism’s flaws are proving fatal for America’s working class. 

Any attempt to revive solidarity between rich and poor nations must begin by recapturing the commitment to social and economic rights on which the WHO was founded.

St. Louis is a microcosm of American structural racism.

The right response to COVID-19 is to rebuild our economy from the ground up, putting people to work in a massive jobs program to secure the public health of all.

The Florentine humanist’s description of the Black Death in the Decameron remains one of the most thoughtful accounts of a society living under a pandemic.

A doctor's case against COVID-19 abortion bans. 

Mortality rates typically fall during economic downturns. But the unprecedented features of the COVID-19 shutdown suggest that trend might not hold this time.

Some have praised China's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but its suppression of information helped cause the problem in the first place.

Early advocates thought it could provide equal access to high-quality care. But private investment has increasingly crowded out public service.

We should be wary of simplistic uses of history, but we can learn from the logic of social responses.

In addition to masks and ventilators, doctors demand a fundamental transformation of our health care system.

The United States has never understood the connection between community and personal well-being.

Claims that the cure is worse than the disease rely on a false tradeoff between human needs and the economy.

Decades of neoliberal austerity will make it harder to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. We must rebuild our social safety net and forge a New Deal for public health.

By using a variety of ploys to manufacture doubt, a whole industry of science-for-hire experts helps corporations put profits over public health and safety.

In place of the hype over personalized medicine, we need a more sober evaluation of the meaning of health and health care.

Atul Gawande helped popularize the idea that health care spending is high because we use too much medicine. He was wrong: it’s the prices, and who pays them.

Harm reduction strategies have their roots in 1980s HIV activism, but they are starting to spread in rural America in response to the opioid crisis.

State policies shaped by white supremacy increase mortality rates in much the same way as other manmade health risks, such as pollution.

Debate over Title IX affirmative consent standards has assumed that consent is the best basis for a feminist sexual politics. But what if it isn’t?