How Pharmaceutical Drugs are Created, and Create Us

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In this course we examine how knowledge about drugs - legal, regulated, and patented drugs - is produced, distributed among diverse scientific-technical and social communities, and how it is received and/or consumed by them. As we will learn, the question of how drugs are produced and how they should be consumed is a highly contentious one. We will study how pharmaceutical companies work not just to distribute, but also to shape scientific knowledge about their products, and we will trace the mechanisms used to transfer that knowledge to researchers, physicians, and potential consumers. We will discuss a range of important issues that arise as our lives become more medicalized, for example: what is the nature of the diseases that researchers and companies target - are their characteristics and limits easily fixed? What are, and what should be the bounds of the use of pharmaceuticals for cosmetic purposes? How can society engage and deal with conflicts of interest - profits versus regulated safety; how can one ensure the integrity of researchers and research? What rules should be placed on how researchers and companies enroll research subjects, both in the US and abroad? We will start off exploring the history of pharmaceuticals regulation in the US, and then explore the peculiar history that led to the unique research infrastructure in the area of pharmaceutical research and development. Then we will turn to explore the wider range of implications of our system of drug production for society at larger, exploring the questions above in the context of diverse cases. In this course you will develop a far-reaching understanding of how scientific and technical knowledge in the medical-pharmaceutical world is produced and distributed, an understanding that you can apply to many other areas of knowledge production.