Sara Silverstein

Consumptive Capitalism On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein

"MAHA, were it a serious movement, would criticize capitalism, or at least the bloated 'health sector' of the American economy. And that would be the right target. But MAHA... diverts profits from one set of businesses to another."
snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...

Consumptive Capitalism On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein

"MAHA leadership criticizes the pharmaceutical industry’s profit motives in order to promote the wellness industry, which of course also operates according to the profit motive."
Here I situate the American health drama in a history of health care.
snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...

Consumptive Capitalism On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein

Failure to seriously critique capitalism and commercial medicine will make us all sicker. MAHA instead criticizes pharma's profit motives in order to promote the wellness industry, with its own profit motive. Here I situate this drama in a history of health care.
snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...

Two tuberculosis cases detected at Camp East Montana ICE facility Eighteen cases of COVID-19 were also identified. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar on Friday visited the 5,000-bed tent facility on the Fort Bliss Army base and said she saw many "chronic issues."

One way concentration camps become zones where law doesn't apply is by neglecting policies & standards that would protect health & provide healthcare. You deny laws & norms & dehumanize your victim.
Read "Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag" by Alexopoulos
www.texastribune.org/2026/02/07/i...

“Good afternoon. My name is [redacted] and my wife and I have been at OMDC since April 15 2025,” reads a handwritten note, wrapped around a lotion bottle that was thrown by a man held captive inside the Otay Mesa Detention Center (OMDC) on Sunday. “It’s cold here all the time and the food is poor,” the missive continues. “For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh. We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick.”

“For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh. We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick.”

Conditions in a San Diego concentration camp, via message hurled out in a bottle.

She Was Honored With A Human Rights Award. Then She Says ICE Tricked And Arrested Her. A HuffPost investigation found how the Trump administration systematically destroyed safeguards for detainees, subjecting them to abuse and neglect.

I feel so sick reading this. She dedicated her life to helping her immigrant trans siblings, finally got the medical care she sought her whole life, and then a year later ICE tricked her, kidnapped her and used her postoperative status as a weapon to destroy her health.

CW for basically everything

Two tuberculosis cases detected at Camp East Montana ICE facility Eighteen cases of COVID-19 were also identified. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar on Friday visited the 5,000-bed tent facility on the Fort Bliss Army base and said she saw many "chronic issues."

One way concentration camps become zones where law doesn't apply is by neglecting policies & standards that would protect health & provide healthcare. You deny laws & norms & dehumanize your victim.
Read "Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag" by Alexopoulos
www.texastribune.org/2026/02/07/i...

(7/7) "what would you think
To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity."
William Shakespeare, in "Sir Thomas More," Act 2, Scene 4 (c. 1590s)

(6/7) "would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you [...]

(5/7) "Say now the king [...]
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? [...]
Why, you must needs be strangers:

(4/7) "For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.

(3/7) "I’ll tell you. You had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,

(2/7) "Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got?

Leave it to Shakespeare and Ian McKellen to so eloquently speak of man's mountainish inhumanity. See Ian McKellan in AN ARK, a new play for mixed reality, at @The Shed now! #Colbert #IanMcKellen #Sh... TikTok video by colbertlateshow

"this your mountanish inhumanity"
Shakespeare of course had the words to describe attacks on immigrants, writing 400 years ago. (1/7)
www.tiktok.com/@colbertlate...

What I Saw at a Maternity Ward in Kenya After the U.S. Cut Off Food and Foreign Aid Photographs tell a story of two mothers determined to help their babies gain enough weight to leave the hospital — only to face little to no food again.

Expectant mothers were left so hungry after the U.S. cut foreign food aid that one woman ate clay and charcoal.

Her baby struggled to gain weight after being born prematurely.

By @annamaria.bsky.social, photos by @storitellah.com & illustrations by Phoebe Ouma

"Trump officials celebrated with cake after slashing aid. Then people died of cholera."

The Soviet gulag is one important comparison. I also keep thinking of the classic question of World War II history: "Did people know?" Did Germans know about concentration camps? Did people living next to the camps and death facilities know? How could they go about their lives if they knew?
We know.

Text reading: ICE Detainee Dies After Being Held at a Troubled Jailhouse in Newark. Jean Wilson Brutus, 41, was one of four migrants to die in the past week after medical emergencies in detention centers in New Jersey, Michigan, Mississippi and Pennsylvania.

For an excellent study of medicalizing euphemisms please see Golfo Alexopolous’s history of the Gulag, entitled "Illness and Inhumanity."

“We should be just as outraged by the deaths that take place out of sight”
@willbunch.bsky.social

Journalists and media: stop bothsidesing attacks on childhood vaccines. We look to you to report what is happening and what the effects will be, not repeat the administration’s rhetoric. The effects will be more sickness and more death. That is not something to bothsides. Hold power accountable.

Heartbreaking. The University of Nebraska will terminate its entire Earth science department.

One of the country's most successful and respected geology & climate programs: gone.

When ideologues & politicians are threatened by the very act of studying climate change, I wonder: who of us is next?

I’m honored to be part of Ukrainian History Global Initiative’s project. I’m contributing on state forms and statelessness. It’s a privilege to be welcomed into the vibrant community of scholars committed to the humanities and knowledge in the midst of war. I have learned so much from my colleagues.

Journalists and media: stop bothsidesing attacks on childhood vaccines. We look to you to report what is happening and what the effects will be, not repeat the administration’s rhetoric. The effects will be more sickness and more death. That is not something to bothsides. Hold power accountable.

Hugely proud of and happy for Prof David Petruccelli, whose history of Interpol is published by OUP today. It provides a complete revision of a major chapter of the history of international policing & is full of amazing anecdotes from the history of international crime
global.oup.com/academic/pro...

They are pro-disease and pro-death — for our children.

Georgia: Repressive Laws Effectively Criminalize Peaceful Protests (Berlin, December 4, 2025) – Georgian authorities have adopted a series of laws that unjustifiably interfere with the right to peaceful assembly and are being used to suppress dissent, Human Rights Wa...

Georgian authorities have adopted a series of laws that unjustifiably interfere with the right to peaceful assembly and are being used to suppress dissent.

People are being detained or slapped with ruinous fines for exercising their fundamental rights.

For First Time in Decades, Child Deaths Will Rise This Year Almost a quarter of a million more children around the world are projected to die in 2025 than in 2024.

This fetid landmark, this historical stain on humanity is primarily due to the stunningly reckless obliteration of America's foreign assistance agency earlier this year.

Led by the richest man on earth. In secret, on a weekend. With zero analysis or discussion of its catastrophic impacts.

While we're reacting to Prasad's anti-vax proclamations, it's helpful to read of responses to shared challenges in other places. Romania's anti-vax is tied up in memories of authoritarianism, an underfunded health system, & disinformation. Rebuilding trust in politics and public health go together.

Opinion | My Father Died of Hepatitis B Before the Vaccine. We Must Not Go Back.

This is the most important op-ed you'll read this week. The Trump administration is about to get rid of the birth-dose of hepatitis B vaccine. That is a deadly choice for many families. @helenouyang.bsky.social tells her story. Now call your member of Congress. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/o...

While we're reacting to Prasad's anti-vax proclamations, it's helpful to read of responses to shared challenges in other places. Romania's anti-vax is tied up in memories of authoritarianism, an underfunded health system, & disinformation. Rebuilding trust in politics and public health go together.