The Pharmaceutical Studies Reader

The Pharmaceutical Studies Reader is an engaging examination of this new and growing field, bringing together provocative, multidisciplinary articles to look at the interplay of medical science, clinical practice, consumerism, and the healthcare marketplace. Ranging far beyond the simple discussion of patients, symptoms, and pills, this reader offers important insights into contemporary cultures of health and illness and the social life of pharmaceuticals.

Drawing on anthropological, historical, and sociological research, it delves into the production, circulation, and consumption of pharmaceuticals. The coverage here is broad and compelling with discussion of topics such as the advent of oral contraceptives, taxonomies of disease, the evolution of prescribing habits, the ethical dimension of pharmaceuticals, clinical trials, and drug production in the age of globalization. Placing a strong focus on context, this collection exposes readers to a variety of approaches, ideas, and frameworks and provides them with an appreciation and understanding of the complex roles pharmaceuticals play in society today.

Sergio Sismondo is Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at Queen's University, Canada. His current work, including a number of recent articles, explores the pharmaceutical industry's development and deployment of clinical research, focusing on intersections of marketing and science.

Jeremy A. Greene is Elizabeth Treide and A. McGehee Harvey Chair in the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, USA. His recent work focuses on the ways in which the development and consumption of therapeutics interact with our understandings of what it means to be sick or healthy, normal or abnormal. His broader research interests focus on the history of disease, the history of global health, and the history of the pharmaceutical industry and its interactions with medical research, clinical practice, and public health.

Sergio Sismondo is Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at Queen’s University, Canada. His current work, including a number of recent articles, explores the pharmaceutical industry’s development and deployment of clinical research, focusing on intersections of marketing and science. He is the author and co-author of a number of books, including An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies, Second Edition (Wiley Blackwell, 2010) and The Art of Science (2003). He is Editor of the journal?Social Studies of Science.

Jeremy A. Greene is Elizabeth Treide and A. McGehee Harvey Chair in the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. His recent work focuses on the ways in which the development and consumption of therapeutics interact with our understandings of what it means to be sick or healthy, normal or abnormal. His broader research interests focus on the history of disease, the history of global health, and the history of the pharmaceutical industry and its interactions with medical research, clinical practice, and public health.? He is the author of Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicines (2014) and Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease (2007), as well as co-editor of Prescribed: Writing, Filling, Using, and Abusing the Prescription in Modern America (2012).