JOURNALISM
11.21.23 Vanity Fair
Secret Warnings about Wuhan Research Predated the Pandemic
A series of previously unreported alarms and clashes over US-funded research in China reveal long-standing friction between two groups of government scientists: those who prioritize international collaboration, and those who are kept up at night by the idea that cutting-edge technologies could end up in the wrong hands.
06.01.23 Vanity Fair
A New Intelligence Report Suggests That the Lab-Leak Wars Will Never End
Given a 90-day deadline to share what they know about COVID’s origins, America’s divided intelligence agencies produced a slim report that leaves both major hypotheses on the table—and raises as many questions as it answers.
6.28.23 Vanity Fair
Inside the COVID Origins Raccoon Dog Cage Match
The small community of researchers studying COVID-19’s origins erupted into open conflict recently over access to data from the pandemic’s early days. With former China CDC director George F. Gao telling VF a lab leak can’t be ruled out, and leading Western scientists sticking to their market-origin guns, is there any hope for a global collaboration to solve the mystery?
04.13.23 Vanity Fair
“They’re Winning”: How the Mifepristone Case Could Sabotage the FDA
A Trump-appointed judge’s ruling against the abortion pill may be “a Mad Lib of a legal opinion,” but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t succeed in radically restricting reproductive rights and gutting the federal government’s ability to safeguard the nation’s drug supply.
03.21.23 Vanity Fair
Inside Ron DeSantis’s Plan to Ride Anti-vaxxism to the White House
He was for the COVID-19 vaccines before he was against them, but now Florida’s governor is all-in on vaccine skepticism—and hoping to use the issue to outflank Trump on the right. With the presidential primaries looming, and MAGA activists angling to turn Trump against the vaccines he helped fast-track, experts fear anti-vaxxism could soon become an official plank of the Republican Party.
03.01.23 Vanity Fair
A Big Week for the “Lab Leak”: Making Sense of the Latest Twists in the COVID-19 Origins Debate
New reports reveal that the Department of Energy and FBI take the laboratory hypothesis very seriously indeed. Could it be enough to prompt a bipartisan inquiry into what caused the pandemic?
01.17.23 Vanity Fair
Can America Learn This Pandemic’s Lessons Before the Next One Hits?
Three years of COVID have made it all too clear how clumsy communication, poor coordination, and rampant political division can harm public health. As new threats rise owing to climate change and the spread of risky biotech, experts say action is needed now to stop the next outbreak from becoming even worse.
10.28.22 Vanity Fair
COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a “Complex and Grave Situation” Inside a Wuhan Lab
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the cutting-edge biotech facility at the center of swirling suspicions about the pandemic’s onset, was far more troubled than previously known, explosive documents unearthed by a Senate research team reveal. Following the trail of evidence, Vanity Fair and ProPublica provide the clearest picture yet of a laboratory institute in crisis.
08.16.22 Vanity Fair
“A Hunger Games Contest”: How Unforced Errors Hobbled America’s Monkeypox Response
As vulnerable Americans scramble to find scarce vaccine doses, critics say the FDA dragged its feet, “the CDC can’t operate its way out of a paper bag,” and a 333-page smallpox response plan was never “activated.” Can Team Biden right the ship before it’s too late?
05.20.22 Vanity Fair
“They Don’t Want the Backlash”: Top Doctors Balk as Team Biden Tries to Turn the Page on COVID
As health experts wrangle over whether to aggressively curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2 or let each American decide how much risk to take, the administration is sending mixed messages—and taking heat from all sides.
03.31.22 Vanity Fair
“This Shouldn’t Happen”: Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy
Chasing scientific renown, grant dollars, and approval from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak transformed the environmental nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance into a government-funded sponsor of risky, cutting-edge virus research in both the U.S. and Wuhan, China. Drawing on more than 100,000 leaked documents, a V.F. investigation shows how an organization dedicated to preventing the next pandemic found itself suspected of helping start one.
12.23.21 Vanity Fair
The Biden Administration Rejected an October Proposal for “Free Rapid Tests for the Holidays”
With omicron cases spreading like wildfire, the White House is finally taking steps to make free antigen tests available to all. But this fall, Vanity Fair has learned, it dismissed a bold plan to ramp up rapid testing ahead of the holidays. Frustrated experts explain how confusion, distrust, and a single-minded fixation on vaccinating Americans left testing on the back burner for so long.
12.03.21 Vanity Fair
A $2.5 Billion Plan to Thwart Omicron-Like Variants Is Stalled Inside the Biden Administration
A draft proposal, which Vanity Fair has obtained, calls for the U.S. to aggressively ramp up vaccination readiness efforts around the world, to make sure donated vaccines actually get administered and the virus can’t mutate freely. So far, the Biden administration has not moved on it.
10.27.21 New York Times Opinion
How Will We Live if Covid Is Here to Stay?
“No one is trying to eradicate Covid from the planet,” Dr. Dara Kass, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the Columbia University Medical Center, told Katherine Eban. “We’re trying to remove it from being a guiding force in our lives.”
10.22.21 Vanity Fair
In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan
A spokesman for Dr. Fauci says he has been “entirely truthful,” but a new letter belatedly acknowledging the National Institutes of Health’s support for virus-enhancing research adds more heat to the ongoing debate over whether a lab leak could have sparked the pandemic.
10.06.21 Vanity Fair
A Global Syringe Shortage Could Derail Biden’s Push to Vaccinate the World
You can’t end the pandemic without vaccinating the world, and you can’t vaccinate the world without specialized syringes, which are in short supply. Advocates who have been urging the Biden administration to address the problem in tense White House meetings say there’s no plan and no sense of urgency.
09.09.21 Vanity Fair
How “Micromanagement and Distrust” Hobbled Biden’s Global Vaccination Push
The White House says it is donating more doses than “all other countries combined,” but critics inside and outside the U.S. government warn of an effort that is “wildly insufficient.”The White House says it is donating more doses than “all other countries combined,” but critics inside and outside the U.S. government warn of an effort that is “wildly insufficient.”
08.27.21 Vanity Fair
Biden’s COVID-19 origins report leaves the lab leak on the table
The U.S. Intelligence Community’s assessment, while inconclusive, vindicates those who insisted on asking if the virus could have escaped from a Wuhan laboratory.
07.23.21 Vanity Fair
“We can’t reach him”: Joe Manchin is ghosting the West Virginia Union workers whose jobs his daughter helped outsourced
She got a $30.8 million golden parachute in a corporate merger. Now, they’re being laid off and the medicines they produced are set to be manufactured overseas. Will anyone step up to save their jobs, and protect America’s drug supply?
06.04.21 Vanity Fair
The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins
Throughout 2020, the notion that the novel coronavirus leaked from a lab was off-limits. Those who dared to push for transparency say toxic politics and hidden agendas kept us in the dark.
04.06.21 Vanity Fair
“We Are Hoarding”: Why the U.S. Still Can’t Donate COVID-19 Vaccines to Countries in Need
Thanks to America First–style contracts negotiated by the Trump administration and an alarming uptick in domestic cases, the urgent work of planning to vaccinate the rest of the world is stuck in limbo.
03.15.21 Vanity Fair
Shot Chasers: How Officials in Trump’s Lame-Duck White House Scrambled to Score COVID-19 Vaccinations
In December and January, a long-planned effort to vaccinate essential federal workers was thrown into turmoil, breeding suspicion, infighting, and “shameless” attempts to crash the list.
02.05.21 Vanity Fair
“A Huge Potential for Chaos”: How the COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Was Hobbled by Turf Wars and Magical Thinking
Inside the Trump administration, sensible ideas for how to manage a massive, unprecedented distribution of vaccinations were no match for bureaucratic knife fighting, gung ho hubris, and a knee-jerk aversion to strong federal action.
01.19.21 Vanity Fair
“A Tsunami of Randoms”: How Trump’s COVID Chaos Drowned the FDA in Junk Science
Over its 114-year history, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has become a global paragon when it comes to drug regulation. In the most consequential year of its existence, however, the agency—and its rookie director—was besieged and almost swallowed by all manner of Trump cronies pushing pet projects, according to new interviews and previously undisclosed documents. A special report.
12.16.20 Vanity Fair
“We Think the Markets Will Sort It Out”: Could White House Action on COVID Testing Have Saved the American School Year?
One influential philanthropy, which has been advocating for more testing of students and teachers since the early days of the pandemic, says the president’s team had a simple response when pushed for more testing: The market will figure it out.
12.02.20 Vanity Fair
The COVID Vaccines Are Approaching. Is the FDA Ready to Inspect the Plants Where They’re Made?
The agency’s Team Biologics inspects the facilities that make vaccines and blood products for U.S. patients. One whistleblower—and other insiders—paints a troubling picture of the daunting challenges the elite unit, made up of just 14 investigators, has faced in recent years.
11.25.20 Mint Lounge
Who Will Be Policing the Quality of a COVID-19 Vaccine?
In an exclusive essay for Lounge, Katherine Eban, author of 'Bottle Of Lies', shortlisted for the NIF Book Prize 2020, weighs in on the future of Big Pharma in a world racing to find a cure for COVID-19.
11.24.20 Vanity Fair
“There Is No Communication, No Emails, Nobody Called”: How the Delayed Transition Kneecapped Biden’s COVID Task Force
With a presidential transition finally, technically underway, Joe Biden’s pandemic task force has the battle of its life ahead of it—and over two weeks of delays have only further complicated matters.
10.22.20 Vanity Fair
Trump’s Vaccine Rush vs. the FDA: Inside Stephen Hahn’s “Existential Crisis”
Since almost the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the president has openly lobbied for a vaccine to claim as a political victory. Increasingly, eyewitnesses say, doctors, researchers, and the embattled head of the Food and Drug Administration have worked behind the scenes to Trump-proof the process.
10.05.20 Vanity Fair
Quack Cures Lose Their Appeal Now That Trump Himself Is Sick With COVID-19
Instead of hydroxychloroquine, oleandrin, or any of the other “shiny objects” his administration has pushed, the president is mixing cutting-edge experimental treatments with a familiar drug that the Pentagon has been studying: famotidine, better known as Pepcid AC.
10.02.20 Vanity Fair
“I Don’t Give a Shit About That”: Inside the White House, Cavalier Disregard Created a COVID Petri Dish
President Trump created a workplace culture that mostly matched his public efforts to dismiss, downplay, and distort the COVID-19 pandemic. There was just one difference: a rigorous daily testing regimen that the vast majority of Americans could only dream of.
09.17.20 Vanity Fair
“That’s Their Problem”: How Jared Kushner Let the Markets Decide America’s COVID-19 Fate
First-person accounts of a tense meeting at the White House in late March suggest that President Trump’s son-in-law resisted taking federal action to alleviate shortages and help Democratic-led New York.
08.10.20 Time.com
The executive order seems to miss an essential point: we shouldn’t trade low-quality drugs made at a distance for low-quality drugs made at home.
On August 6, President Trump signed an executive order to encourage the federal government to buy American-made essential medicines. To date, amid a flurry of industry and legislative efforts, Trump’s order is the most high-profile effort to support “reshoring,” the return of drug manufacturing to the United States.
07.30.20 Vanity Fair
How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan Went “Poof Into Thin Air”
This spring, a team working under the president's son-in-law produced a plan for an aggressive, coordinated national COVID-19 response that could have brought the pandemic under control. So why did the White House spike it in favor of a shambolic 50-state response?
06.19.20 Vanity Fair
“This Shouldn’t Be Happening”: Tulsa Health Officials Despair as the Trump Rally Rolls Into Town
The science is clear: The COVID-19 curve is nowhere near flat enough to justify a massive indoor rally. But the president’s show must go on, and red state governors must go along.
06.08.20 Vanity Fair
Exclusive: The Secret Plan to Unwithdraw From the WHO After Trump’s “Bizarre,” “Ruinous” Exit
Documents show that health officials have spent weeks scrambling to salvage the relationship—along with global programs to combat everything from polio to Ebola.
05.27.20 Vanity Fair
Documents Expose FDA Commissioner's Personal Interventions on Behalf of Trump’s Favorite Chloroquine Doctor
Looking past concerns about the drug’s safety, not to mention his own agency’s recommendations, Stephen Hahn took time during the COVID-19 crisis to lend a helping hand to Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a hero among fringe Trumpworld figures.
05.14.20 Vanity Fair
“He Was Fired for Being Right”: Rick Bright Warns Congress “Time Is Running Out” to Contain Coronavirus
As Trump rage-tweeted and representatives bickered amid bottles of hand sanitizer, the ousted head of BARDA described trying to mount an effective federal response to COVID-19—and paying a heavy price.
05.05.20 Vanity Fair
“Political Connections and Cronyism”: In Blistering Whistleblower Complaint, Rick Bright Blasts Team Trump’s Pandemic Response
Two weeks after being pushed out of his post, the former head of a $1.5 billion federal health agency formally accuses top officials of pressuring him to approve unproven chloroquine drugs and award pricey contracts to friends of the administration.
04.24.20 Vanity Fair
“Really Want to Flood NY and NJ”: Internal Documents Reveal Team Trump’s Chloroquine Master Plan
Forget testing, ventilators, and PPE. Donald Trump’s big plan to beat COVID-19 involved distributing millions of doses of an unproven drug. Behind the scenes, senior administration officials pushed hard to bend the rules and back up his boasts.
04.16.20 Reuters
FDA may have dropped standards too far in hunt for chloroquine to fight coronavirus
A behind-the-scenes look at the FDA's plummeting standards as it scrambled — under White House pressure — to build a stockpile of chloroquine drugs.
04.03.20 Reuters
As Trump administration debated travel restrictions, thousands streamed in from China
Reuters has found that the administration took a month from the time it learned of the outbreak in December to impose the initial travel restrictions amid furious infighting.
03.26.20 Time Magazine
Coronavirus Pandemic is Creating a Drug Supply Crisis Just When We Most Need Medicine
As the world scrambles for a magical pharmaceutical bullet to stop the coronavirus, drugs perceived as cures - despite reed-thin evidence - have vanished from pharmacy shelves.
10.29.19 STAT News
In generic drug plants in China and India, data falsification is still a problem
Analysis of the FDA’s own records reveals that violations of data integrity are not only persistent and ongoing in overseas drug manufacturing plants, but are happening with greater frequency than in U.S. plants.
09.05.19 Undark Magazine
It’s Time to Get Tough on Overseas Drug Manufacturers
Even in a hostage situation, the FDA was uncertain of its authority over drugs used by many Americans.
07.27.15 Vanity Fair
Torture, American-Style: The Role of Money in Interrogations
A scathing new report reveals how the Defense Department and psychologists went in on what amounts to an “undisclosed joint venture.”
01.22.15 Vanity Fair
The Psychologists Who Taught the C.I.A. How to Torture (and Charged $180 Million)
The C.I.A. tortured detainees in ways more brutal, sustained, and gruesome than was previously known, and two medical professionals were integral to its efforts.
05.21.14 Reader’s Digest
Drug Shortages: The Scary Reality of a World Without Meds
Imagine surgeons running out of anesthetic drugs, cancer patients who can't get lifesaving chemotherapy, and doctors scrambling for the most basic antibiotics. We're already there.
03.28.14 Fortune Magazine
What Ails Big Pharma
A new book chronicles the uneasy relationship between money and drugs, and what it means for the rest of us.
02.12.14 Fortune Magazine
Ranbaxy’s Empty Promises
On Jan. 23, the FDA dropped a heavy hammer on the Indian generic drug giant Ranbaxy Laboratories, announcing it will restrict imports from the company's manufacturing plant in Toansa, India.
10.23.13 Fortune Magazine
Painful Prescription: Pharmacy Benefit Managers Make Out Better than their Customers
In late 2008, Meridian Health Systems, a nonprofit that owns and operates six hospitals in southern New Jersey, hired a new pharmacy benefits management (PBM) company to help reduce the surging medication costs for its 12,000 employees and their families.
06.23.13 Fortune Magazine
Why the Supreme Court is wrong on generic drugs
On Monday, in a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that since generic drugmakers are only replicating brand-name drugs that have already been deemed safe by the Food and Drug Administration, patients can’t sue to hold them liable for the dangerous design of a pharmaceutical.
05.23.13 Fortune.com
The latest to claim fraud at generic Lipitor maker Ranbaxy: Its owners
Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo has quietly stood by its decision to purchase Ranbaxy in 2008. Now, though, the company is publicly suggesting it was defrauded in the $4.6 billion acquisition.
05.15.13 Fortune Magazine
Dirty medicine: The epic inside story of fraud at a generic Lipitor giant
The epic inside story of long-term criminal fraud at Ranbaxy, the Indian drug company that makes generic Lipitor for millions of Americans.
05.13.13 Fortune.com
Maker of generic Lipitor pleads guilty to selling adulterated drugs
Ranbaxy Laboratories pleads guilty to seven criminal counts.
01.23.13 Fortune Magazine
Are generics really the same as branded drugs?
Consumers are told that generics are just like their name-brand counterparts. More medical professionals are starting to say that's not the case.
06.27.12 Fortune Magazine
The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal
A Fortune investigation reveals that the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. How the world came to believe just the opposite is a tale of rivalry, murder, and political bloodlust.
11.09.11 Fortune Magazine
OxyContin: Purdue Pharma’s painful medicine
What the strange saga of Purdue and its $3 billion drug tells us about our national dependence on painkillers.
10.28.11 Self Magazine
The Hidden Dangers of Outsourcing Radiology
That scan of your brain, bones or breasts you got last Tuesday? It might have been read by someone who isn't a doctor and lives 12 time zones away. If, that is, anyone has bothered to read it at all.
05.09.11 Fortune Magazine
The War Over Lipitor
You'd think that in this era of generic-drug dominance, making the transition to a non-branded version of Pfizer's vaunted cholesterol-fighting statin would be smooth, or at least controlled. And indeed, that's precisely how it seemed — until just a few months ago.
04.04.11 Fortune Magazine
Drug Theft Goes Big
Organized gangs are stealing prescription medicine in increasingly audacious heists. That’s a problem for Big Pharma and for patients, who can unknowingly buy stolen — and sometimes dangerous — medications.
10.08.10 Fortune.com
What a Scientist Didn’t Tell the New York Times about His Study on Bee Deaths
Few ecological disasters have been as confounding as the massive and devastating die-off of the world's honeybees. The phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) — in which disoriented honeybees die far from their hives — has kept scientists, beekeepers, and regulators desperately seeking the cause.
03.31.10 New York Times
Are You Buying Illegal Drugs?
Last month, thieves cut through the roof of an Eli Lilly warehouse in Enfield, Conn., shimmied down a rope, disabled the alarms and made off with $75 million worth of psychiatric drugs, including the antidepressants Prozac and Cymbalta and the antipsychotic Zyprexa.
08.19.09 Fortune Magazine
The “Medical Mafia”
Prosecutors say a group of top lawyers and doctors conspired to collect millions in inflated damages by pushing accident victims into dubious surgery.
05.21.09 Self Magazine
Bad Bargain
All of us want cheaper medicine—but not if it costs us our health. Troubling reactions and a series of recalls are making some doctors wonder, Are generic drugs as safe as the FDA says they are?
07.17.07 Vanityfair.com
The War on Terror: Rorschach and Awe
America’s coercive interrogation methods were reverse-engineered by two C.I.A. psychologists who had spent their careers training U.S. soldiers to endure Communist-style torture techniques. The spread of these tactics was fueled by a myth about a critical “black site” operation.