Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9049

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: book

Davis P.
Contested Ground: Public Concern and Private Interest in the Regulation of Pharmaceuticals
Oxford: Oxford Univ Press 1996
http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780195091205

Abstract:

Addressing the key issues in the public debate about prescription drugs, this book establishes an analytical framework for the development of regulatory policy in this area. A range of international experts, working at the interface between the social sciences, pharmacy, medicine, and public policy debates, contribute to the delineation of these issues. The chapters are grouped into three sections. The first part focuses on prescription drugs within a social and cultural context. The second addresses the pharmaceutical market and its distinctive industrial structure. The final section provides a series of international case studies on regulatory innovation. Introductory and concluding chapters summarize the issues and draw out themes, relating them to the wider policy debate.

The underlying theme of the book is that therapeutic drugs should not be considered ordinary products. These drugs raise important social, ethical, and policy questions that transcend orthodox analytical approaches and that cut across conventional disciplinary boundaries. The object of this book, therefore, in not just to identify the major issues but also to develop some of the analytical foundations required to advance the course of public policy debate in this area. Sociologists, public health specialists, policy-makers, legislators, consumer groups and those in the pharmaceutical industry will find this book an invaluable resource to that end.

Contents
Introduction: Medicines in a Post-Modern World P. Davis
Part I: The Social and Cultural Context

1. The Pharmakon Phenomenon: Cultural Conceptions of Drug and Drug Use , M. Montagne
2. Medicalization and the Pharmacological Treatment of Blood Pressure , I. Kawachi and P. Conrad
3. The Mass Media and the Benzodiazepine Controversy , J. Gabe and M. Bury
4. Adverse Reactions, Social Responses: A tale of Two Asthma Mortality Epidemics , N. Pearce
Part II: The Product Cycle

6 Market and Industrial Structure. R. Ballance
7. Pharmaceutical Innovation in a Changing Environment , K.I. Kaitin
8. Prices for Prescription Drugs: The Role of Market Forces and Government Regulation , D. Gross, J. Kile, J. Ratner, and C. Thomas
9. The Professional Corporate Context: Trends in the United States , J.W. Salmon
10. Pharmacy in the Western World Health Care System , A. Wertheimer, M. Dickerson, B.A. Briesacher
Part III: The Regulatory Framework: International Innovation

11. Pharmaceutical Policy and Regulation: Setting the Pace in the European Community , L. Hancher
12. The Liberalization of Access to Medication in the United States and Europe , P.V. Rosenau and C. Thoer
13. Developments in Economic Evaluation: The Subsidization of Pharmaceuticals , M. Aristides, A. Mitchell and D. Henry
14. The Self-Regulation of Pharmaceutical Marketing: Initiatives for Reform , J. Lexchin and I. Kawachi
15. New Approaches to Influencing Physicians’ Drug Choices: The Practice-Based Strategy , F. Haaijer-Ruskamp and P. Denig
16. Technology and Social Choice: Policy Scenarios for Prescription Drugs , H. Leufkens and P. Davis