The banner for the Health Beats section, showing a doctor's examination room.

Health care is a matter of life and death. Around the world, structural inequalities across gender and class levy an unacceptable toll.

Access to health care is as much a matter of public policy as it is the size of a person’s pocketbook. Within a doctor’s office, gender and body weight–among many other factors–affect the quality of treatment offered.

Sexual, reproductive, and gender health clinician and writer Lola Pellegrino asks: How do we increase access to and quality of health care across the globe?

A person on a beach watches as a woman in the distance glitches in and out of existence.

Medication for Intentional Forgetting

There are drugs that can help delete bad memories–but do you really want to lose a piece of yourself?

A Roschach ink blot. (I think it looks like a moth.)

Our Inkblots, Ourselves

A history of strange diagnostic images–and their surprising utility

Drug packets and alcohol bottles.

When a Doctor Prescribes You Whiskey

Illegal drugs are not necessarily dangerous, and dangerous drugs are not necessarily illegal

A close-up of pill packaging.

How the Worst Blood-Pressure Medication Became the Best Testosterone Blocker

When the label comes off, patients become their own physicians

Health Beat logo depicting a doctor's office

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