Stop treating anti-capitalist activism as health science

21 Aug 2025 09:52 AM

• Public health academics openly advocate overthrowing capitalism while presenting radical views as neutral scientific research, including claims that COVID lockdowns saved 77,000 lives by “switching off capitalism”.
• Influential WHO advisors smuggle anti-business activism into health policy, targeting “social media, banking, insurance, education, transportation, real estate and utilities” as health threats 
• Their anti-capitalist agenda demands “fundamental restructuring of the global political and socio-economic system” rather than addressing actual health issues 
• Modern public health is a fundamentally political movement, and the hardening of its anti-capitalist stance should be taken seriously, a new IEA paper argues

A new paper from the Institute of Economic Affairs exposes how influential public health academics are using their scientific credentials to promote radical anti-capitalist policies while disguising their activism as objective research.

The discussion paper, “Anti-Capitalism and Public Health”, published yesterday by the IEA, reveals that leading figures in the public health establishment openly advocate for the overthrow of the market economy. Author Dr Christopher Snowdon shows how researchers have expanded their focus from traditional health concerns to attacking the entire economic system.

The research documents how WHO-backed academics describe capitalism as a “pathological system” and argue that addressing health issues “requires nothing short of a fundamental restructure of the global political and socio-economic system.”

Professor Gerard Hastings OBE, a former WHO advisor, claimed in May 2020 that China’s COVID-19 lockdown saved 77,000 lives – “twenty times more than were taken by the virus” – proving that “switching off capitalism” protects us “from ourselves.”

The study shows how these academics have evolved from targeting a few “unhealthy commodity industries” to attacking all “commercial entities” – including small businesses and cooperatives. The list of supposedly health-harming industries now encompasses everything from fossil fuels to social media platforms and food delivery services.

Although it is difficult to find a coherent alternative to “neoliberalism” in the work of public health academics, Snowdon shows that they are consistently opposed to free trade and economic growth. He concludes that they may see costs to business, employment and growth as features, not bugs, of public health regulation.

Dr Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said:

“Anti-capitalist rhetoric is far from uncommon in academia, but the field of public health has become rabidly opposed to free markets and free trade in the last decade. Public health has become more of a militant political enterprise than an evidence-based, scientific movement.”  

Notes to Editors

Read the full publication “Anti-Capitalism and Public Health” here.

• This research analyses peer-reviewed articles from leading journals, including The Lancet and British Medical Journal, focusing only on highly cited research by well-regarded academics. 
• Additional evidence includes WHO-supported researchers calling for “challenging the ideological dominance of capitalism, neoliberalism, multistakeholderism” and academics advocating for “degrowth” economics, while praising communist countries like Cuba and Venezuela as health policy models.

The mission of the Institute of Economic Affairs is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems. The IEA is a registered educational charity and independent of all political parties.

The Institute of Economic Affairs has no corporate view. The views expressed in all IEA publications represent those of the authors alone and not those of the Institute, its managing trustees, Academic Advisory Council members, or senior staff.