Full metadata
Title
Bad drug gone good: an explanatory model for drug normalization
Description
Today in the U.S. the narrative of the “bad drug” has become quite a familiar account. There is an ever-growing collection of pharmaceutical products whose safety and efficacy has been debunked through the scandalous exposure of violations of integrity on the part of researchers, lapses in procedure and judgment on the part of the FDA, and reckless profiteering on the part of big pharma. However, a closer look reveals that the oversights and loopholes depicted in the bad drug narrative are not incidental failures of an otherwise intact, effective system. Rather, bad drugs, like good drugs, are a product of normal operations of the system; the same processes, actors, and influences manifest in both. The aim of this project is to shed light on these processes, actors, and influences at work in drug normalization by interrogating the peculiar case of the drug Lupron. Lupron exhibits all of the controversial features of the “bad drug” narrative but has remained an endorsed and embraced staple of the infertility industry. This contradiction situates Lupron to expose a number of the contingencies on which drug normalization rests more generally. In order to put forth an explanatory model for drug normalization, three such contingencies are described in detail for the case at hand: the nature of drug regulation, the structures and value that underpin the medical categorization of diseases, and the inextricability of post-medicine from the forces of industry. These contingencies provide some explanatory power for understanding not only the retention of Lupron but the ways in which all drugs are produced, validated, and perpetuated in a society.
Date Created
2015
Contributors
- Stevenson, Christine, M.S (Author)
- Brian, Jennifer (Thesis advisor)
- Hurlbut, Benjamin (Thesis advisor)
- Maienschein, Jane (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Topical Subject
Resource Type
Extent
v, 78 pages. : color illustrations
Language
Copyright Statement
In Copyright
Primary Member of
Peer-reviewed
No
Open Access
No
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.36419
Statement of Responsibility
by Christine Stevenson
Description Source
Viewed on March 30, 2020
Level of coding
full
Note
Partial requirement for: M.S., Arizona State University, 2015
Note type
thesis
Includes bibliographical references (pages 71-78)
Note type
bibliography
Field of study: Sociology
System Created
- 2016-02-01 07:03:22
System Modified
- 2021-08-30 01:25:55
- 2 years 8 months ago
Additional Formats