Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on August 12, 2009
Enterprise and Society 2009 10(4):675-686; doi:10.1093/es/khp039
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Pharmaceutical Networks: The Political Economy of Drug Development in the United States, 1945–1980
DOMINIQUE A. TOBBELL is an assistant professor in the Program in the History of Medicine at the University of Minnesota
Contact information: Program in the History of Medicine, University of Minnesota, 510A Diehl Hall, 505 Essex St., SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455. E-mail: dtobbell@umn.edu
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Pharmaceutical Networks describes how American drug firms, biomedical researchers, physicians, and Congressional reformers shaped the research, regulatory, and policy environments for prescription drugs in the three decades after World War II. In these decades, pharmaceutical reformers in Congress sought to secure passage of legislation that would increase the government's control over drug development, distribution, and practice. They proposed these reforms as a way of curbing the high cost of prescription drugs and putting a break on the escalating health care costs. To defend itself against this reform movement, the American drug industry built alliances with research universities, medical schools, and professional medical societies by offering to the medical and academic communities solutions to their shared problems. These problems included a shortage of biomedical workers and the increasing authority of the government over medical practice. The industry's solutions helped strengthen the biomedical workforce and restricted the government's control of the health