Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
7332845 | Social Science & Medicine | 2015 | 9 Pages |
Abstract
How do governments contribute to the pharmaceuticalization of society? Whilst the pivotal role of industry is extensively documented, this article shows that governments too are accelerating, intensifying and opening up new trajectories of pharmaceuticalization in society. Governments are becoming more deeply invested in pharmaceuticals because their national security strategies now aspire to defend populations against health-based threats like bioterrorism and pandemics. To counter those threats, governments are acquiring and stockpiling a panoply of 'medical countermeasures' such as antivirals, next-generation vaccines, antibiotics and anti-toxins. More than that, governments are actively incentivizing the development of many new medical countermeasures -Â principally by marshaling the state's unique powers to introduce exceptional measures in the name of protecting national security. At least five extraordinary policy interventions have been introduced by governments with the aim of stimulating the commercial development of novel medical countermeasures: (1) allocating earmarked public funds, (2) granting comprehensive legal protections to pharmaceutical companies against injury compensation claims, (3) introducing bespoke pathways for regulatory approval, (4) instantiating extraordinary emergency use procedures allowing for the use of unapproved medicines, and (5) designing innovative logistical distribution systems for mass drug administration outside of clinical settings. Those combined efforts, the article argues, are spawning a new, government-led and quite exceptional medical countermeasure regime operating beyond the conventional boundaries of pharmaceutical development and regulation. In the first comprehensive analysis of the pharmaceuticalization dynamics at play in national security policy, this article unearths the detailed array of policy interventions through which governments too are becoming more deeply imbricated in the pharmaceuticalization of society.
Keywords
Related Topics
Health Sciences
Medicine and Dentistry
Public Health and Health Policy
Authors
Stefan Elbe, Anne Roemer-Mahler, Christopher Long,