Challenges our understanding of health, risks, facts, and clinical trials
Acknowledgments ix
List of Illustrations xi
Introduction 1
1. Responding to Facts 27
2. Pharmaceutical Witnessing and Direct-to-Consumer Advertising
55
3. Having to Grow Medicine 87
4. Mass Health: Illness Is a Line You Cross 105
5. Moving the Lines: Deciding on Thresholds 135
6. Knowing Your Numbers: Pharmaceutical Lifestyles 181
Conclusion. Living in a World of Surplus Health: Frequently Asked
Questions 197
Notes 219
References 239
Index 257
Joseph Dumit is Director of Science and Technology Studies and Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity and editor, with Regula Valérie Burri, of Biomedicine as Culture: Instrumental Practices, Technoscientific Knowledge, and New Modes of Life.
"Drugs for Life is simply superb, a major accomplishment in the study of pharmaceuticals and their expanding relation to life itself. There is no recent scholarly work that attempts or accomplishes what Joseph Dumit does here, tackling the relation between big pharma and clinical epistemology in such a comprehensive and satisfying way. He deftly links critical debates across the life and human sciences, making an important and compelling argument on a matter central to contemporary public debate." Lawrence Cohen, author of No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things "Drugs for Life shocks the reader into seeing health, medicine, pharmaceuticals, and the pharmaceutical industry and drug research for what they are from a cultural standpoint: a new framing of the future world for all of us. And that future is now and troubling and transformative of human conditions. A remarkable contribution that will perturb and disturb professional and general readers." Arthur Kleinman, co-editor of Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices "In this provocative and important book, Joseph Dumit brings a new approach to bear on critiques of the pharmaceutical industry and U.S. health care. He marshals ethnographic research among drug company executives and marketing strategists, along with the analysis of scientific and popular representations of their products, showing how consumers have been tutored into a proactive stance toward health. Over the past few decades, we have come to live by 'the numbers' and 'risk factors' that make embracing lifelong pharmaceutical regimes seem like common sense. But is it? Dumit explores the pharmaceuticalization of American culture and consciousness with a light, accessible touch that belies the depth of his knowledge." Rayna Rapp, author of Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America
Dumit (anthropology, Univ. of California, Davis; Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity) takes on the pharmaceutical industry in this examination of how it shapes American healthcare. He underscores the need for more data and research on the comparative effectiveness of drugs, and points out how privacy regulations like HIPAA impede these efforts. He also argues that the American health system's overuse of diagnostic tests (also produced by the pharmaceutical industry) has not lead to improved health outcomes. Still, assessing risks and treatment options can be challenging for even the most motivated patients, and Dumit's examples of decisions around prostate cancer treatments and statins are enlightening. Dumit concludes that Americans have a "relatively new perception of ourselves as inherently ill and in need of chronic treatment," due to the efforts of the pharmaceutical industry. However, with an aging population, improved survival rates of previously fatal illnesses, and more frequent diagnostic tests, Americans are subject to more chronic conditions than in the past. VERDICT An interesting but optional purchase. Readers will also be interested in Gilbert Welch's well-received Should I Be Tested for Cancer? as well as Jerome's Groopman's recent Your Medical Mind, which presents a nuanced guide to the decision making process.-Mary Chitty, Cambridge Healthtech, Newton, MA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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