Alexander Zaitchik is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and a freelance journalist based in New Orleans. He is the author of several books, including Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19.
Latest by this author
Fears of the nuclear threat may have subsided with the end of the Cold War, but the danger did not.
By Alexander Zaitchik in Science | English
How the 1979 Bayh-Dole Act, which handed patents on publicly funded research to private companies, reshaped U.S. science and innovation policy.
By Alexander Zaitchik in Science | English
How pseudo-archaeology and alternative history, fueled by media and conspiracy culture, have gained popularity in the U.S., influencing extremist ideologies.
Alexander Zaitchik is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and a freelance journalist based in New Orleans. His writing has appeared in the Nation, the New Republic, the Intercept, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, Foreign Policy, Vice, and more. He is the author of several books, including Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 (Counterpoint Press, 2022).
External
Chevron Has Avoided Justice for Environmental Crimes in Ecuador and the U.S.—Can Canada Hold It to Account?
Alternet | April | 2018
Publications by this author
Counterpoint Press | March | 2022
An authoritative look at monopoly medicine from the dawn of patents through the race for COVID-19 vaccines and how the privatization of public science has prioritized profits over people.
Why does the U.S. government fund the development of medical science in the name of the public only to relinquish exclusive rights to drug companies, and how does such a system impoverish us, weaken our responses to crises, and, as in the cases of AIDS and COVID-19, put the world at risk?
Outlining how generations of public health and science advocates have attempted to hold the line against Big Pharma and their allies in government, Alexander Zaitchik’s first-of-its-kind history documents the rise of privatized medicine in the United States and its subsequent globalization. Owning the Sun tells one of the most important and least understood histories of our time.
