I asked iconographer Celeste Lauritsen to respond to the crisis in drug pricing and access in the United States. Instead of overt images of the pharmaceutical industry’s behavior, she brings us Luke. Written on wood, his figure shares space with a Caduceus and a map of the U.S. Here, the patron saint of artists and physicians waits for us. Why?   

Pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefit managers thrive amidst an outdated patent system and corporate monopolies. With one in four American adults struggling to afford prescription drugs, the issue of access to medicines touches households in every county of every state and territory. 

The icon’s map reminds me of "Adios Map" by the late artist and curator Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. When I first saw the mixed-media painting in the East Building at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. I felt an immediate kinship to Lauritsen’s icon. Smith’s Adios Map assembles goodbye phrases from different languages referring to stolen land across a grid of America’s mainland. Both imply. Both wait. 

Might St. Luke The Physician ask us to consider our most immediate territory? Our bodies? Essential medicines intercede – for minutes or decades – when we reach our limits. They keep us breathing. They stop cells from lethal over-replication. They digest food, control blood glucose, prevent blood clots and fight infections (if, and only if we can afford them). 

What about the organic Caduceus on the right? It’s a familiar symbol for medical organizations and publications. Asserting that the Rod of Aesculapius is “the only true symbol of medicine” is a bit of a purity sport for some people. The Rod or Staff entwined by one snake is identified with medicine. Aesculapius was, after all, the Greek god of medicine. These two symbols, however, have taken on a nearly interchangeable meaning in visual culture today. And it is the Caduceus (wings, two snakes) that suits both the delivery of medical treatment and distribution of medicines today. The Caduceus is the Herald Wand for Hermes, the Greek god of commerce. It fits. Or, in the language of corporate healthcare, it aligns. 

Icons are associated with the veneration of a saint or a narrative scene. To venerate is to honor. It also means, simply, to respect. 

When will we appeal to the brilliant promise of the pharmaceutical industry to respect us? Instead of skyrocketing prices, where are skyrocketing ethics? Skyrocketing cooperation? Major pharmaceutical companies spend more on shareholder dividends, executive compensation and stock buybacks than they do on research and development. Add on spending for advertising and congressional lobbying, and the R&D proportion shrinks even further. 

What we expect from every politician representing us and shaping policy matters. The valuable territory we cede to the pharmaceutical industry matters. 

The status quo is not inevitable. We can do better. Lauritsen’s choice of Luke is no accident. What does the patron saint of artists and physicians wait for us to see? To change? 

If lawmakers would truly put themselves in the shoes of constituents needing medicines of any kind, they would vote accordingly. We would not waste time pointing out the institutional monopolies and obvious absurdities undermining our ability to make basic decisions. Sigh. Even the right to birth control is being called into question in this country. A chic, straightforward work of art on the topic is "In Our Shoes" by Michele Pred. Cheers to you, Michele. Thank you. For a concise reminder of the subtle, powerful factors jeopardizing contraceptive access I recommend Deborah Tuerkheimer’s essay “Threats to Contraception” in the November 2025 issue of the Stanford Law Review.

Michele Pred is represented by Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York, NY. ​

This Jen Sorensen cartoon from 2012 still resonates today. Attitudes toward medicine access are like attitudes toward access to healthcare in general. For decision-makers who don't have to worry about getting a doctor appointment, or a prescription refill, or needed treatment, it's abstract. These lawmakers are the ones with no skin in the game. Voters are decision-makers, too. Really. Truly. Seriously. In 2026 may we pay attention. May we tell the difference. May we make good decisions for the communities (from local to global) that we are a part of.

In December, at the end of 2025, the AMA Journal of Ethics stops publication. I am gutted to hear it. 

This open-access journal meets a sweet spot in health professions education. A rigorously composed, insightful cocktail of art, ethics and healthcare, it is free to all interested readers. The journal started over 25 years ago. It asks good questions. Tricky ones. Fascinating, practical ones. In the topics over the years, access to medicines comes up naturally, in various contexts. 

I toast every member of the editorial team (an editor is a mixologist, after all), every editorial fellow, every artist and author and podcast interviewer. I toast the journal’s collaboration with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Here’s to you! 

A toast to AMA Journal of Ethics is truly a toast to public health.

​Content will be archived at the site. Visit AMA Journal of Ethics. Read the November 14, 2025 MedPage Today article by Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH, and Kayhan Parsi, JD, PhD. 

If you're in New Orleans, swing by the Kolaj Institute Gallery for Big Orange Monster: An Emergency Collage Exhibition. The show runs from September 10 through October 18, 2025 and features contributions from 128 artists in 13 countries. Curated by Ric Kasini Kadour, these collages gather witty, scary, uncertain, thoughtful responses to all manner of orange monsters in our midst.

I could not help but think of the FDA's Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations, known as the Orange Book. This 'book' is itself a good thing, but improper listings by drugmakers contribute to abuse of the patent system and wild-high prices. The team at I-MAK (Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge) has a database and information about the issue, as well as constructive solutions for improving the patent system. My collage entry in the show is called "Devil in the Details." ​

Visit the Kolaj Institute Gallery at 2374 Saint Claude Avenue (Suite 230) in New Orleans.

​
​Bewitched 
by the lemon rind spiraling    
my neighbor’s rocks glass
I think of scurvy.

I toast the trick of citrus
and each sailor 
too late to receive it.
I sip respecting 
that early clinical trial,
Dr. Lind on the high seas
and all who stop misery 
through observation,
all who labor out-of-sight.
 
In class we learn
epi   demos   logos
the study of what befalls
a population, 
a cocktail of Greek words.
We learn that when
public health is working 
we don’t notice it. 

I toast those who do.



"Epidemiology at 5:00pm" is included in The Book of Jobs: Poems About Work. This digital anthology published by the journal One Art on Labor Day, September 1, 2025, is edited by Erin Murphy. Learn more here. The anthology will be re-launched by Penn State University Libraries Open Publishing in 2026. I am pleased that the poem found a place in this collection of truly varied voices and work experiences. "Epidemiology at 5:00pm" recognizes public health researchers, advocates and educators. I'm intending it in the broadest sense, but right now I especially thank CDC employees past and present for their tremendous dedication. 

Novelist John Green has a new collection of essays on tuberculosis that does as good a job at public health truth-telling as anything I’ve read this year. His writing is easy to understand. The truth of TB is not. Everything is Tuberculosis: the History and Persistence of our Deadliest Infection brings us details about the medical and cultural history of TB and its danger. We are now equipped to prevent, detect and treat it. What holds us back? 

In his introduction Green says “This is a book about that cure – why we didn’t find it until the 1950’s, and why in the decades since discovering the cure, we’ve allowed over 15,000,000 humans to die of tuberculosis. I started writing about TB because I wanted to understand how an illness could quietly shape so much of human history. But along the way, I learned that TB is both a form and expression of injustice.” (5)

Yesterday, following the lectionary cycles, many preachers addressed the parable of the Good Samaritan in their sermons. It only appears in the Gospel of Luke (who is, interestingly, the patron saint of physicians and artists). The story is so familiar that it can be hard to hear it with fresh ears. We use it as a reminder to be kind to strangers in need or to scold those we expect to help but do not. The question “Who is my neighbor?” certainly echoes emptily through recent political decisions in the U.S. We don’t know when any of us, individually or in populations, will land shocked and desperate in the ditch. We don’t know when we’ll find ourselves walking past others who are. It happens. I especially like to think about the innkeeper who is entrusted with the care of the man rescued from the ditch as he recovers. He’s paid to do it. This tips his role into that of healthcare and hospitality provider rather than a fellow traveler. Every person in the story matters.       

Green talks about our moment in time as being the middle of the tuberculosis story. Not the end. The parable of the Good Samaritan can be viewed this way, too. It is more than a tidy, contained example. What happens now?
​​

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green is available from Crash Course Books (2025).

Each month for the 2024-25 academic year a piece of artwork or a poem on the topic of access to medicines has been displayed in the West Virginia University Health Sciences Library alongside a comment. For May, "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing IV" was accompanied by a response by Lemley Mullett, Digital Collections Assistant, West Virginia and Regional History Center. 

​A current Wolf in Sheep's Clothing is the ORPHAN Cures Act (H.R. 946). It presents itself as protecting research innovation. Actually, it is a crafty way for pharmaceutical companies to avoid price negotiations. Learn more from this Patients for Affordable Drugs update and fact sheet.

There are more Abraham Lincoln images in Gettysburg than you can shake a stick at. This statue on Baltimore Street by the Adams County Public Library rises above the text of the Gettysburg Address. While I’m not so keen on the overly oratorial pose sculptor Stanley J. Watts placed him in with the outstretched arm, there is something about the rest of his figure that feels right to me. The location feels right, too. The library is a place of welcome for all, a place of information, questions and stories. At a local People’s Town Hall event on May 3, both PA Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta and U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean mentioned the Gettysburg Address in their remarks. They are each enamored by the writing and the evergreen truth of it.

Zoom in to the corner of the sheet Lincoln holds. The sticker is for Tradeoffs. 

Tradeoffs covers health policy news in a way that is accessible and sharp. I cannot put words into Lincoln’s mouth, but I think he would have liked this nonprofit organization and its podcast episodes. Lincoln had the maturity to let his views evolve. He was a policy wonk. Lincoln paid attention to the lived reality of others. He personally suffered serious injuries and infectious disease (including two rounds of malaria). Public health was no abstraction. He labored to communicate so that the result was effortless. I removed the sticker with the Tradeoffs logo. The moment was one of solidarity. This drive for the wellbeing of an entire population does not change through time.