Book ID: CBB001450628

Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health (2012)

unapi

Dumit, Joseph (Author)


Duke University Press


Publication Date: 2012
Physical Details: xii + 262 pp.; ill.
Language: English

"Every year the average number of prescriptions purchased by Americans increases, as do healthcare expenditures, which are projected to reach one fifth of the U.S. gross domestic product by 2020. In Drugs for Life, Joseph Dumit considers how our burgeoning consumption of medicine and cost of healthcare not only came to be, but came to be taken for granted. For several years, Dumit attended pharmaceutical industry conferences; spoke with marketers, researchers, doctors, and patients; and surveyed the industry's literature regarding strategies to expand markets for prescription drugs. He concluded that underlying the continual growth in medications, disease categories, costs, and insecurity is a relatively new perception of ourselves as inherently ill and in need of chronic treatment. This perception is based on clinical trials that we have largely outsourced to pharmaceutical companies. Those companies in turn see clinical trials as investments and measure the value of those investments by the size of the market they will create. They only ask questions for which the answer is more medicine. Drugs for Life challenges our understanding of health, risks, facts, and clinical trials, the very concepts used by pharmaceutical companies to grow markets to the point where almost no one can imagine a life without prescription drugs."--Provided by publisher.

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Reviewed By

Review Krista Sigurdson (2015) Review of "Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health". East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (pp. 311-314). unapi

Review Savelli, Mat (2013) Review of "Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health". Chemical Heritage. unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001450628/

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Authors & Contributors
Daemmrich, A.
Horace A. Bartilow
Emma Bedor Hiland
Sara Matthiesen
Amy F. Ogata
Daemmrich, Arthur
Concepts
Pharmaceutical industry
Medicine and society
Pharmacy
Medicine and government
Medicine and economics
Medicine and law
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
Places
United States
Great Britain
Latin America
Europe
New Mexico (U.S.)
Massachusetts (U.S.)
Institutions
United States. Food and Drug Administration
United States. Patent Office
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