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Regardless of what any of us feel about the death penalty, we should all oppose our state’s use of medicines in executions − a practice that impersonates a complicated medical procedure in a poorly monitored setting. This too often results in botched executions and simultaneously imposes psychological harm for the health care professionals and others involved. (Dr. Wes Ely, 10/13)

As covid-19 numbers finally decrease and new monkeypox infections level off, Uganda is in the midst of an Ebola outbreak, with a reported 63 infections and 29 deaths thus far. (Leana S. Wen, 10/13)

Today, we see a damaging form of distrust play out in significantly lower COVID-19 vaccination rates among African Americans and persistently high rates of subsequent infection and mortality. Distrust of the medical profession can also harm people at the end of life if it causes them to press for futile treatments that inflict unnecessary suffering. (Barbara Coombs Lee and Paul Smith, 10/13)

Forty years ago, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning history “The Social Transformation of American Medicine,”  sociologist Paul Starr predicted that independent physician practice, which had been a cornerstone of American medicine for most of the 20th century, would be eclipsed by the “coming of the corporation.” (Jeff Goldsmith, 10/14)