In a 1988 essay on pandemics, Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg wrote, “We have no guarantee that the natural evolutionary competition of viruses with the human species will always find ourselves the winner.”

The World Health Organization recently released a long-anticipated report on SARS-CoV-2 origins, based on 28 days of field research and site visits in China conducted jointly by 17 international and...

One of the most surprising aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic for those of us who teach the history of public health is how unwilling many Americans have been to adopt health measures to protect others. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, tens of millions of Americans traveled, despite the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged them to stay home and the overall death rate from the coronavirus is approaching 300,000. Should recent events make us revisit aspects of the history of public health? And how can these stories inform future public health efforts during pandemics?

Before there was the Covid-19 pandemic, there was Pandemic. This tabletop game, in which players collaborate to fight disease outbreaks, debuted in 2007. Expansions feature weaponized pathogens, historic pandemics, zoonotic diseases, and vaccine development races. Game mechanics modelled on pandemic vectors provide multiple narratives: battle, quest, detection, discovery. There is satisfaction in playing “against” disease–and winning. Real pandemic is not as tidy as a game. But can games support understanding about the societal challenges we now face? Yes.

The United States leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths. Although many people have called out the inadequacies of our health care system, Covid-19 has exposed the most significant shortcomings. The need for change can no longer be ignored. Here are three lessons from this pandemic that should be leveraged for change.

The major success story of health care ethicists in the pandemic has been their role in establishing ventilator triage policies. But they have more to offer the C-suite of health care institutions.

Covid-19 is teaching us the stern lesson that economic well-being and health justice are two sides of the same coin. To weather pandemics and restore the social contact that economic life demands, we need to sign a new social contract with public health.

I helped develop guidelines for the ethical allocation of scarce resources during a public health emergency, such as a pandemic..I hope my contributions have an impact. I especially hope to see my work used since it emphasizes the perspectives of minority and underserved communities, who tend to have less voice in health policy. But now I find myself dreading the use of my work.

One-third of all new GoFundMe campaigns in the United States are for COVID-19-related needs. This shows where we have failed as a society. It is a makeshift response to institutional failures and not a fair or sustainable solution to crises.

Since the initial outbreak in Wuhan last December, the national and global responses to COVID-19 have been in ethics freefall.

Influenza and coronavirus cause similar symptoms probably through similar modes of transmission. What is unique about coronavirus is that misinformation, missteps, conspiracies, and cover-ups have left their mark on public trust.

The World Health Organization will hold an emergency committee meeting on the pandemic reemergence of Zika virus and the explosive increase in reported cases of congenital microcephaly in Brazil possibly linked to...

Media reports indicate that seven individuals have received ZMapp to date, two of whom have died. The first recipients were two American health care workers from Liberia who were treated...

This week the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues released a brief, Ethics and Ebola: Public Health Planning and Response,to the administration and the public on ethical preparedness for...

After having been virtually eliminated in the United States in the year 2000, measles have made a comeback, with nearly 150 cases in 17 states and nearly 30 confirmed cases of the...

The current measles outbreak has brought public attention to the ease with which vaccine exemptions are available. As the media continually inform us, 48 states allow for religious exemptions, while...

As health care institutions in the United States prepare for Ebola patients, many have adopted the policy that those providing hands-on care should come from a pool of volunteers. Given...

A number of states have recently adopted mandatory quarantine measures, including New York and New Jersey, for any individual entering the United States who had direct contact with someone infected with Ebola. This...

Dr. Craig Spencer, the first person in New York confirmed to have Ebola, is a clearly dedicated and selfless physician who worked for Doctors Without Borders in West Africa helping...

While details of the deaths of patients in Dallas and Madrid from Ebola are not public, their passing prompts questions about resuscitation in individuals infected with the virus. To date,...

In a recent New York Times op-ed, David Brooks observes that governance, in the form of multilateral organizing, is missing from the response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Unfortunately, global...

Beyond crucial questions of fair access to scarce supplies of the experimental drug ZMapp and to other potentially effective drugs to treat Ebola, commentators from bioethics, public health, journalism, and...

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the largest and deadliest on record, and the crisis is evolving rapidly. More than 2,200 people have been infected in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and...

Today’s New York Times reported a rare outbreak of measles in New York City. Because the disease was mostly eradicated by 2000, most clinicians were baffled by the high fevers, rash, and respiratory...

Recently I had a Susan Reverby moment. Reverby is the Wellesley historian best known for unearthing the revelations of the Guatemalan syphilis and gonorrhea studies conducted by the United States Public Health...