“Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, has agreed to plead guilty to three federal criminal charges for its role in creating the nation’s opioid crisis and will pay more than $8 billion and close down the company.” What harm has already been done? The opioid crisis has been a big obstacle to tackle in recent years due to those that struggle with its addiction and the interests of many pharmaceutical companies.

The United States has seen a dramatic rise in social unrest drawing large gatherings of protesters at a time when public health officials and physicians are urging people to socially distance to limit the spread of a deadly pandemic. Two distinct protest movements, anti-lockdown and Black Lives Matter, have garnered remarkably different responses from physicians and their professional organizations.

Experts weigh priority for health-care and essential workers and people of color

Racism kills. Whether through force, deprivation, or discrimination, it is a fundamental cause of disease and the strange but familiar root of racial health inequities. Yet, despite racism’s alarming impact on health and the wealth of scholarship that outlines its ill effects, preeminent scholars and the journals that publish them routinely fail to interrogate racism as a critical driver of racial health inequities.

Three doctors say the pandemic revealed enduring racial inequity — and medicine alone cannot fix it.

The unjust killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, amplified by the health disparities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ethnic disparities of the political climate, have shined a spotlight on historical and ongoing institutional racism in America. Many professional scientific organizations have published statements opposing it. But statements have little impact unless actions result from them.

An academic strike is planned for this week, alongside marches and demonstrations worldwide.

The inequitable racial landscape of the United States is hardly deniable. The effects of racism on health status and on access to health care are well documented. Comprehensive race/ethnicity data relevant to Covid-19 will likely affirm inequitable patterns in exposure, testing, and treatment, patterns that are already being observed by practitioners in some facilities and officials in some states.

It’s a moment that people with disabilities have long feared: there’s a shortage of life-saving equipment, like ventilators, and doctors say they may be forced to decide who lives and who dies. People with disabilities worry those judgments will reflect a prejudice that their lives hold less value.

Even in a crisis, doctors should not abandon the principle of nondiscrimination.