Health
Coronavirus Needs a Movement to Respond
ACT UP rally, May 21, 1999. Photo credit: NIH History Office There are times in history when sudden events — natural disasters, economic collapses, pandemics, wars, famines — change everything. They change politics, they change economics and they change public opinion...
Feds Must Order Companies To Make Medical Supplies Now
Within two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American auto factories were already converting to make tanks instead of cars. The government needs to treat the Covid-19 pandemic like a war - except the enemy is an invisible virus rather than a foreign...
Coronavirus Prevention That Works For Working People
Photo credit: United Workers / flickr / cc America isn’t ready for coronavirus. In the last 24 hours, millions of school children across the country have been told to stay home for two weeks, or even longer. This is an important public health step to stop the spread,...
The Coronavirus Is A Wake-Up Call For Climate Change
In the short time since the COVID-19 virus was discovered and made public in Wuhan, a city of 11 million in central China, this new strain of coronavirus - a family of pathogens that includes the common cold, as well as more deadly strains like SARS and MERS - has...
We Don’t Need Another Liar-In-Chief: Biden Must Tell The Truth About Medicare For All
I’m an Iowan, a father, and a voter. And I’m just plain tired of the lies too many candidates tell us about health care. They say we don’t need Medicare For All, when I know that we do. These candidates parrot lines they’re fed by big pharma, big insurers and big...
Joe Biden Has Tried To Cut Social Security For 40 Years
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / flickr / cc Recently, a newsletter from the Bernie Sanders campaign laid out Joe Biden’s long record of supporting cuts to Social Security. The website PolitiFact weighed in on one part of that record, a speech Biden gave in 2018 in which...
Lies in the White House, Cancer in Our Neighborhoods
The enrichment of chemical industry executives — at the same time their companies are battling attempts to regulate their toxic products — represents a far greater scandal than any vain and empty boasting out of the White House. Yet the deregulatory collusion between the chemical industry and the Trump administration continues to go largely unnoticed.
Sen. Collins Lies About Accepting Opioid Money
In a conversation with a constituent last week, U.S. Senator Susan Collins at first flatly denied she had accepted money from both the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharmaceuticals, and drug company giant Eli Lilly. The Sacklers have admitted to misleadingly...
How Our Country Talks About The War On Drugs Is Backwards
“How our country talks about the war on drugs is backwards,” said Kassandra Frederique, in her opening remarks to the first-ever convening of the People’s Action Overdose Crisis Cohort in Washington, D.C.“Criminalization of drug use and drug prohibition was no...
What Breast Cancer Taught Me About Unequal Health Care
Every weekday for six weeks this fall, I had radiation for early-stage breast cancer. October 9th was my last treatment. This journey has been a lesson in privilege, structural inequality and our broken social and economic systems. In May, I saw my obstetrician in New...
