Contested Ground: Public Purpose and Private Interest in the Regulation of Prescription Drugs Book

This book discusses the key issues in the public debate about prescription drugs and establishes an analytical framework for the development of regulatory policy in this area. A range of international experts working at the interface between the social sciences, pharmacy, medicine, and public policy deal with these issues. Their chapters are grouped into three sections. The first focuses on the social and cultural context of prescription durgs. The second addresses the pharmaceutical market and its distinctive industrial structure. The third provides a series of international case studies on regulatory innovation. Introductory and concluding chapters summarize the issues and draw out themes, relating them to the wider policy debate. The underlying motif of the book is that therapuetics drugs are no ordinary product. They raise important social ethical and policy questions that transcend orthodox analytical approaches and that cut accross conventional disciplinary boundaries. The object of this book, therefore, in not just to identify the major issues but also to develop some of the analytical foundations required to advace the course of public policy debate in this area.Read More