Synopses & Reviews
"Tobbell analyzes the political and economic history of the alignment of the pharmaceutical industry, academic institutions and their faculty and organized medicine. This book is essential reading for policymakers and their staff as well as persons who study the history of health policy and those who contribute to it through medical research, advocacy and journalism. " -Daniel Fox, author of
The Convergence of Science and Governance: Research, Health Policy, and American States"Dominique Tobbelland#8217;s vivid, balanced and probing account of pharmaceutical politics is a significant, needed analysis of the relationships between the pharmaceutical industry, university researchers, the medical profession and government in the Cold War period. More than this, Pills, Power, and Policy shows why it continues to be difficult to agree in the United States on the relative roles of corporate enterprise, government regulation, technological innovation, freedom to prescribe, and consumer marketing and protection, all played out against the rising costs of health care. Timely and thought-provoking."--Rosemary A. Stevens. DeWitt Wallace Distinguished Scholar, Department of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College
"A superb and compelling account of the creation of one of Americaand#8217;s most reviled entities: Big Pharma. With clarity and subtlety, Pills, Power, and Policy weaves together the political, economic, and the medical to reveal the entangled history behind our modern pharmaceutical predicament."--Andrea Tone, Ph.D., Professor of History and Canada Research Chair in the Social History of Medicine, McGill University
and#147;Pills, Power and Policy provides an outstanding description and analysis of the evolution of drug policy. It is an extremely important contribution to our understanding of the political, scientific, and economic nature of pharmaceutical regulation." -Daniel S. Greenberg, Washington journalist and author of Science, Money and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion
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and#8220;Based on extensive research, Pills, Power, and Policy is intelligently written, and its points are illustrated with highly readable examples.and#8221;
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and#8220;Tobbell contributes . . . fine historical attention to the development of large pharmaceutical companies . . . with a longer story of lobbying and politics.and#8221;
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and#8220;Pills, Power, and Policy is an important contribution to our understanding of the science and politics of the pharmaceutical industry.and#8221;
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"[A] well-researched and skillfully argued volume."--Bulletin of the History of Medicine
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“Pills, Power, and Policy is an important contribution to our understanding of the science and politics of the pharmaceutical industry.” Mical Raz, M.D., Ph.D. -- Yale University School of Medicine
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and#8220;[A] well-researched and skillfully argued volume.and#8221;
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and#8220;In this important new book, Gabriel traces the surprisingly dynamic relationship between intellectual property and the economics and politics of the pharmaceutical industry. Medical Monopoly narrates the formation and reorganization of the and#8216;ethical pharmaceutical industryand#8217; in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries around questions of patents, trademarks, and a series of mutually defining alliances made between the medical profession and the modern pharmaceutical enterprise. Gabrieland#8217;s research in preparation for this volume has been meticulous, and his narrative pacing will help audiences from many different fields engage with the provocative story he has to tell. The resultant work is an elegant demonstration of the power of historical analysis in understanding the present-day connections between patents, trademarks, medical science, and the marketplace, with substantial implications for contemporary policy and practice.and#8221;
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and#8220;In this lively account, Gabriel takes us back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to explore the early histories of the manufacturing, marketing, patenting, and regulation of drugs and their roles in transforming the practice of American medicine. Marrying a keen eye for detail with attention to the larger picture, Gabriel explores the tensions between beneficence and business in the emergent pharmaceutical industry. This meticulously researched book establishes Gabriel as one of the nationand#8217;s experts on the pharmaco-medical enterprise in America from the early Republic to the Progressive Era.and#8221;
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and#8220;Medical Monopoly is a fascinating book about the history of intellectual property (IP) rights in pharmaceuticals. Gabriel traces the role that patents and trademarks played in the development of the pharmaceutical industry, explores the question of whether IP rights promoted research and development, and identifies the changing attitudes of physicians and scientists to the propriety of patenting drugs. The book reaches a number of conclusions that are surprising to the contemporary student of both IP and pharmaceuticals, and Gabriel does a nice job of marshaling the massive amount of evidence he uncovered into a chronological narrative. This important work will be of interest to historians of patents and trademarks; to historians of medicine, science, and technology; and to scholars of contemporary IP and science policy.and#8221;
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andquot;This fascinating book serves as a pointed reminder that the sources of therapeutic rationale are just as much tied to the production and regulation of therapies as the collective decision-making on ethical practice.andquot;
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andquot;In his thought-provoking and well-researched book, Gabriel explores the evolution of patenting, and to a lesser extent, trademark registration, in the American pharmaceutical industry. It is a fascinating and timely contribution.andquot;
Synopsis
Since the 1950s, the American pharmaceutical industry has been heavily criticized for its profit levels, the high cost of prescription drugs, drug safety problems, and more, yet it has, together with the medical profession, staunchly and successfully opposed regulation.Pills, Power, and Policyoffers a lucid history of how the American drug industry and key sectors of the medical profession came to be allies against pharmaceutical reform. It details the political strategies they have used to influence public opinion, shape legislative reform, and define the regulatory environment of prescription drugs. Untangling the complex relationships between drug companies, physicians, and academic researchers, the book provides essential historical context for understanding how corporate interests came to dominate American health care policy after World War II.
Synopsis
During much of the nineteenth century, physicians and pharmacists alike considered medical patenting and the use of trademarks by drug manufacturers unethical forms of monopoly; physicians who prescribed patented drugs could be, and were, ostracized from the medical community. In the decades following the Civil War, however, complex changes in patent and trademark law intersected with the changing sensibilities of both physicians and pharmacists to make intellectual property rights in drug manufacturing scientifically and ethically legitimate. By World War I, patented and trademarked drugs had become essential to the practice of good medicine, aiding in the rise of the American pharmaceutical industry and forever altering the course of medicine.
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Drawing on a wealth of previously unused archival material, Medical Monopoly combines legal, medical, and business history to offer a sweeping new interpretation of the origins of the complex and often troubling relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and medical practice today. Joseph M. Gabriel provides the first detailed history of patent and trademark law as it relates to the nineteenth-century pharmaceutical industry as well as a unique interpretation of medical ethics, therapeutic reform, and the efforts to regulate the market in pharmaceuticals before World War I. His book will be of interest not only to historians of medicine and science and intellectual property scholars but also to anyone following contemporary debates about the pharmaceutical industry, the patenting of scientific discoveries, and the role of advertising in the marketplace.
Synopsis
During roughly the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, medical patenting and the use of trademarks were considered unethical forms of monopoly by both the medical community and reputable drug manufacturers. Intellectual property rights were thought to monopolize the use of therapeutic substances unfairly, thereby inhibiting the progress of medical science. A prohibition on medical patenting was incorporated into codes of ethics by both the medical and pharmaceutical communities, and physicians that manufactured, used, or prescribed monopolized drugs could be, and were, ostracized from the medical community. As a result, the and#147;ethicaland#8221; drug manufacturers refrained from patenting or trademarking their goods for most of the century.
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In sharing this history in full for the first time, Joseph M. Gabriel traces how, in the decades following the Civil War, those reputable drug manufacturers faced a significant problem. Both domestic chemical companies and foreign drug manufacturers introduced a wave of highly effective new medicines. Neither was constrained by the ethical prohibition against IP rights in the same way, and so they often protected their products by both patents and trademarks. Faced with a series of new products that were both clearly effective and also monopolized, the and#147;ethicaland#8221; drug manufacturers found it extremely difficult to compete.
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As the medical market of the late nineteenth-century was increasingly flooded with patented and trademarked drugs, the older therapeutic logic began to fracture and so, by the turn of the century, the orthodox medical community had re-conceptualized the problem of monopoly as having little if nothing to do with the question of clinical effectiveness. The spellbinding history of this transition has clear relevance to contemporary debates about pharmaceutical patenting and the role of advertising in the medical marketplace.
About the Author
Dominique A. Tobbell is Assistant Professor in the Program in the History of Medicine and the Graduate Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is also the oral historian for the University of Minnesotaand#8217;s Academic Health Center History Project.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Pharmaceutical Politics, Then and Now
Part I: Forging Pharmaceutical Relations
1. Knowledgeable Relations: The Building of a Pharmaceutical Research Network
2. Workforce Relations: The Invention of the Pharmaceutical Postdoctoral Fellowship
3. Professional Relations: Crafting the Public Image of the Health Care Team
Part II: Allied against Reform
4. Cold War Alliances: Kefauverand#8217;s Bid for Pharmaceutical Reform
5. Expert Alliances: The Creation of the Drug Research Board
6. Generic Alliances and the Backlash against Regulatory Reform
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index