Drugs for Life

Dumit Joseph Dumit

Description

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 also 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 and profits that 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.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• USA
• Pharmaceutical industry
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 03 septembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822393481
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

FOR DRUGS LIFE

EXPERIMENTAL FUTURES TechnologIcal LIves, ScIentIic Arts, AnthropologIcal VoIces

A S E R I E S E  I T E  b y Michael M. J. Fischer and Joseph Dumit

DRUGS FOR LIFE

How Pharmaceutical Companies Deîne Our Health

Joseph Dumit

| | Duke UniversitY PressDurham and London2012

© 2012 Duke UniversitY Press

Āll rights reserved

Printed in the United Śtates of Āmerica on acid-free paper ♾

Designed BY Heather HensleY

Ypeset in Ścala BY seng ïnformation ŚYstems, ïnc.

LiBrarY of Congress Cataloging-in-PuBlication Data appear on the last printed page of this Book.

for SylvIa

CONTENTS

ix

xi

1

27

55

87

105

135

181

197

List of ïllustrations

Ācknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

ONE esponding to Facts

TWO Pharmaceutical Witnessing and Direct-to-Consumer Ādvertising

THREE Having to Grow Medicine

FOUR Mass Health: ïllness ïs a Line ou Cross

FIVE Moving the Lines: Deciding on hresholds

SIX Knowing our NumBers: Pharmaceutical LifestYles

CONCLUSION Living in a World of Śurplus Health: FrequentlY Āsked Questions

 219 Notes

239 eferences

257

ïndex

ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE 1 “Āre ou the Picture of Health?” 2 FIGURE 2 op therapeutic classes of drugs BY U.Ś. dispensed prescriptions, 2010 3 FIGURE 3 Personal healthcare expenditures, BY tYpe of expenditure, 1965–2018 9 FIGURE 4 11“‘Get well soon’? We prefer, ‘ŚtaY healthier longer’” FIGURE 5 “How did all these treatments compare in the longer run?” 37 FIGURE 6 “ProBlems Tç [Direct-to-Consumer] Ādvertising Creates for MY Patients and Practice” 57

FIGURE 7 59Depression awareness commercial FIGURE 8 Cholesterol awareness commercial 61 FIGURE 9 70Fosamax Bone-densitY test commercial FIGURE 10 74Zoloft commercial FIGURE 11 Zoloft commercial exemplifYing liminalitY 75 FIGURE 12 79ipolar awareness commercial FIGURE 13 Éexor XR weBsite 81 FIGURE 14 95“Converting Patients to Volume” FIGURE 15 99“Product Development: he ‘Classical’ Design” FIGURE 16 “Commercial ïnputs” 100