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

Addressing the key issues in the public debate about prescription drugs, this book 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 debates, contribute to the delineation of these issues. The chapters are grouped into three sections. The first part focuses on prescription drugs within a social and cultural context. The second addresses the pharmaceutical market and its distinctive industrial structure. The final section 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 theme of the book is that therapeutic drugs should not be considered ordinary products. These drugs raise important social, ethical, and policy questions that transcend orthodox analytical approaches and that cut across 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 advance the course of public policy debate in this area. Sociologists, public health specialists, policy-makers, legislators, consumer groups and those in the pharmaceutical industry will find this book an invaluable resource to that end.

Peter Davis is at University of Auckland.