Module: Health, Illness and Society

Topic 8


Topic 8: The Pharmaceutical Industry

Objectives

When you have completed the reading and participated in the taught components for this week, we hope you will be able to:

  • Outline different approaches to thinking about the work, power and impact of the pharmaceutical industry in relation to health, illness and medicine.
  • Critically reflect upon the relationship between patient organisations and the pharmaceutical industry.

Lecture: Sociological understandings of the pharmaceutical industry

This lecture will explore the expansion of medicine use over recent decades and increasing ‘phamaceuticalisation’ of society. It will consider the role of key actors in this expansion, with a particular focus on the role of the pharmaceutical industry, and examine the way in which regulation, commercialisation and innovation have supported expansion.

Virtual seminar: Thinking critically about patients, consumer groups and drugs

In this seminar you will critically reflect on the relationship between patients, patient organisations and the pharmaceutical industry.


Click below to discuss:


Preparation for this week

The preparatory task for this seminar is to read the set reading (a section focused on the mobilisation of patients or consumer groups around drugs and a paper focused on lay experience of taking medicines) and consider if/how you think the role of patients and consumer groups does or doesn’t support the process of pharmaceuticalisation and why.

This week the seminar will start on Tuesday. The emphasis is on constructive debate: one volunteer will post a position and a another a response; and you can then respond/reply to postings as they appear.

Set reading

ACADEMIC PAPERS

Fox NJ, Ward KJ, O’Rourke AJ (2005) The ‘expert patient’: empowerment or medical dominance? The case of weight loss, pharmaceutical drugs and the Internet. Social Science & Medicine 60: 1299–1309. (Read it here)

Section on ‘Patients, consumers and the lifeworld’ (pps 716-718) in Williams SJ, Martin P and Gabe J (2011) The pharmaceuticalisation of society? A framework for analysis. Sociology of Health & Illness 33(5): 710-725. (Read the section here / access the whole paper here)

 

Lecture Notes and Powerpoints

Lecture powerpoint

Reference list