Big-pharmaceuticalisation: Clinical trials and Contract Research Organisations in India

We use Big-pharmaceuticalisation to extend the notion of pharmaceuticalisation to describe the spread of pharmaceutical research globally and illustrate how TRIPS has encouraged a concentration of capital in India, with large companies gaining increasing market share and using their market power to rewrite regulations and introduce new regulatory practices in their own interest. Contract Research Organisations, with relevant, new, epistemic skills and capacities, are both manifestations of the changes in commercial research cultures, as well as the vehicles to achieve them. These changes have reinvigorated public concerns that stress not only access to new medicines but also the 'price' of innovation on research participants.