Unhealthy pharmaceutical regulation : innovation, politics and promissory science / Courtney Davis, Kings College London, UK and John Abraham, University of Sussex, UK
Putting Pharmaceutical Regulation to the Test: A Social Science for Public Health -- The Political Economy of 'Innovative' Drug Regulation in the Neo-Liberal Era -- Designs on Diabetes Drugs -- Desperate Regulation for Desperate Cancer Patients -- The Making of a Harmful 'Therapeutic Breakthrough' -- The Regulatory Science and Politics of Risk Management -- Conclusions and Policy Implications
Summary
"European and American drug regulators govern a multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry selling its products on the world's two largest medicines markets. This is the first book to investigate how effectively American and supranational EU governments have regulated innovative pharmaceuticals regarding public health during the neo-liberal era of the last 30 years. Drawing on years of fieldwork, the authors demonstrate that pharmaceutical regulation and innovation have been misdirected by commercial interests and misconceived ideologies, which induced a deregulatory political culture contrary to health interests. They dismantle the myth that pharmaceutical innovations necessarily equate with therapeutic advances and explain how it has been perpetuated in the interests of industry by corporate bias within the regulatory state, unwarranted expectations of promissory science, and the emergent patient-industry complex. Endemic across both continents, the misadventures of pharmaceutical deregulation are shown to span many therapeutic areas, including cancer, diabetes and irritable bowel syndrome. The authors propose political changes needed to redirect pharmaceutical regulation in the interests of health."-- Provided by publisher
