Challenges our understanding of health, risks, facts, and clinical trials

Every year the average number of prescriptions purchased by Americans increases, as do healthcare expenditures, which are projected to reach one-fifth of the U.S. gross domestic product by 2020. In Drugs for Life, Joseph Dumit considers how our burgeoning consumption of medicine and cost of healthcare not only came to be, but also came to be taken for granted. For several years, Dumit attended pharmaceutical industry conferences; spoke with marketers, researchers, doctors, and patients; and surveyed the industry's literature regarding strategies to expand markets for prescription drugs. He concluded that underlying the continual growth in medications, disease categories, costs, and insecurity is a relatively new perception of ourselves as inherently ill and in need of chronic treatment. This perception is based on clinical trials that we have largely outsourced to pharmaceutical companies. Those companies in turn see clinical trials as investments and measure the value of those investments by the size of the market and profits that they will create. They only ask questions for which the answer is more medicine. Drugs for Life challenges our understanding of health, risks, facts, and clinical trials, the very concepts used by pharmaceutical companies to grow markets to the point where almost no one can imagine a life without prescription drugs.

"“A rich and valuable contribution to literature on medical ethics, cultural studies, and the sociology of medicine. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.”" - Choice

"“Drugs for Life is a synthetic achievement. It captures a web of phenomena occurring in disparate spaces—clinical research, treatment guidelines, advertising practices, biotechnology investments—and shows how they interact to reconfigure our intuitive, personal sense of what health is and what living requires. For this reason, it is destined to enter the canon of science and technology studies.” " - American Ethnologist

"“Although its topic is an abstract one, much of Drugs for Life consists of insightful readings of advertisements, of statements by marketers and of patients' accounts. Dumit has pulled together a tremendous number of telling arguments and phrases, and can be at his best when reading them.”" - Times Higher Education

"“Thought-provoking and chilling. . . . All registered nurses would . . . benefit from his analysis."" - National Nurse

"“Dumit examines the role played by the pharmaceutical industry and the rise of evidence-based medicine, which have redefined the borders between sickness and health along statistical lines. Drugs for Life is recommended for anyone who has ever been told they're at risk for illness.”" - Chemical Heritage

"“Drugs for Life is a brilliant and provocative analysis of the new cultural and business logics of science, medicalization, and the drug industry.”" - Somatosphere

"“Drugs for Life is one of the best among many recent works on the pharmaceutical industry, and certainly the most sophisticated by the standards of science and technology studies.”" - Science as Culture

"Drugs for Life is a welcome addition to the fields of medical sociology, medical anthropology, the history of medicine, and STS more broadly. . . . Drugs for Life is provocative beyond the empirical area of pharmaceuticals. For example, scholars who research nondrug substances and materials will find in Drugs for Life a blueprint for success in the pharmaceutical industry that is provocative for understanding why not all products have this degree of ubiquity in the prevention of illness. Scholars who research medical equipment, devices, or tissues that exhibit druglike characteristics will find this work provocative." - East Asian Science, Technology and Society

"[T]his book or one of its kind is an important read for those involved in the care of patients or the education of medical students or residents." - Family Medicine