Capitalism as Pathology

Drugmaker makes $37bn in vaccine sales and predicts bumper year ahead from Covid jabs and pill

The revenue medical journals earn from reprints is a big incentive to publish studies with positive findings.

Governments around the world are busily exploiting the coronavirus crisis to push for no-strings-attached corporate bailouts and regulatory rollbacks.

An interview on health and politics – Two physicians discuss the political economy of human well-being.

A damning new report shows that one of the leading COVID-19 vaccine makers appears to have played a role in restricting access to those very vaccines. The report, “Pfizer’s Power,” published this week by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, examines Pfizer’s contracts with the United States, United Kingdom, European Commission, Albania, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic and Peru. They offer a rare glimpse into the power Pfizer has to silence governments, throttle supply, shift risk and maximize profits in the middle of a public health crisis. We speak with Public Citizen researcher Zain Rizvi, author of the new report.

Congressional Democrats – citing concerns over the possibility of political interference in the rush to develop a coronavirus vaccine – say they will look to scientists, not President Donald Trump, to ensure that if one becomes available it is both safe and effective.

Sure, it may be true. But that doesn’t mean it’s productive.

"It is painfully clear that the developing world cannot rely on the largesse and charity of rich nations and pharmaceutical companies, and hundreds of thousands of people are dying from Covid-19 as a result."

"If this pandemic cannot catalyze real change, what will?"

Analysis: the new coronavirus variant seems highly transmissible, but the big question is whether it causes severe disease. Either way, poorer nations will be hit hardest

Hospitalizations across the country have increased 20 percent in two weeks, taxing already exhausted health care workers as the United States confronts the Omicron variant.

"It's nothing short of pandemic profiteering for Pfizer to make a killing while its vaccines have been withheld from so many."

Through his hallowed foundation, the world’s de facto public health czar has been a stalwart defender of monopoly medicine.

The malign forces of capital are working tirelessly to ensure that the system they created and benefit from will endure.

Like so many aspects of this pandemic, the vaccine shortage is a clear example of how the private sector has failed to protect us during a crisis. Rather than setting its own priorities and running its own program, the Canadian government continues to chase companies such as Pfizer—which no democratic government controls. We see the results now, as health authorities cancel vaccine appointments and new cases surge across the country.

The president went from mild symptoms to hospitalization within 24 hours.

Only by taking the vaccine industry into full public ownership, with small "d" democratic controls in place, can we provide an internationalized response to this and future pandemics that properly recognizes vaccines as a global public good.

'In the coming fall and winter, the US epidemic will likely run rampant, and more countries and regions will be forced to suffer because of the US.'

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As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide approaches 4 million and the pandemic could be with us for months or years, we look at who can access drugs like remdesivir, being developed by pharmaceutical giant Gilead, which has the patent for the drug and is poised to make massive profits. We look at how much drugs like remdesivir will cost, and who can access them, with writer Achal Prabhala, coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil and South Africa.

Before the pandemic hit, the idea of a universal basic income was fringe policy in much of the developed world. But now that the economy is on life support and Canadians are being paid to stay away from work, the idea is looking more like common sense to many.

The Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist has been attacked with falsehoods that he created the coronavirus and wants to profit from it.

'We would be able to identify asymptomatic carriers, even before they were conscious of losing their smell,' says Dana Small

Financial system Instex used for first time to send medical support to Iran as it battles severe coronavirus outbreak

While this was supposed to be a much better researched and in-depth analysis of mutual aid within The Last of Us, I ran out of time, so it ended up being mos...

The White House prepares to falsify data and cook the books in order to sell their schemes to the American people