Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine

Author:   Jeremy A. Greene (Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins University)
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN:  

9781421414935


Pages:   376
Publication Date:   22 December 2014
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine


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Overview

Generic drugs are now familiar objects in clinics, drugstores, and households around the world. We like to think of these tablets, capsules, patches, and ointments as interchangeable with their brand-name counterparts: why pay more for the same? And yet they are not quite the same. They differ in price, in place of origin, in color, shape, and size, in the dyes, binders, fillers, and coatings used, and in a host of other ways. Claims of generic equivalence, as physician-historian Jeremy Greene reveals in this gripping narrative, are never based on being identical to the original drug in all respects, but in being the same in all ways that matter. How do we know what parts of a pill really matter? Decisions about which differences are significant and which are trivial in the world of therapeutics are not resolved by simple chemical or biological assays alone. As Greene reveals in this fascinating account, questions of therapeutic similarity and difference are also always questions of pharmacology and physiology, of economics and politics, of morality and belief. Generic is the first book to chronicle the social, political, and cultural history of generic drugs in America. It narrates the evolution of the generic drug industry from a set of mid-twentieth-century ""schlock houses"" and ""counterfeiters"" into an agile and surprisingly powerful set of multinational corporations in the early twenty-first century. The substitution of bioequivalent generic drugs for more expensive brand-name products is a rare success story in a field of failed attempts to deliver equivalent value in health care for a lower price. Greene's history sheds light on the controversies shadowing the success of generics: problems with the generalizability of medical knowledge, the fragile role of science in public policy, and the increasing role of industry, marketing, and consumer logics in late-twentieth-century and early twenty-first century health care.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jeremy A. Greene (Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins University)
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.90cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.635kg
ISBN:  

9781421414935


ISBN 10:   1421414937
Pages:   376
Publication Date:   22 December 2014
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

Table of Contents

"Preface to the 2016 Edition Acknowledgments Introduction. The Same but Not the Same Part I. What's in a Name? Chapter 1. Ordering the World of Cures Chapter 2. The Generic as Critique of the Brand Part II. No Such Thing as a Generic Drug? Chapter 3. Drugs Anonymous Chapter 4. Origins of a Self- Effacing Industry Chapter 5. Generic Specificity Part III. The Sciences of Similarity Chapter 6. Contests of Equivalence Chapter 7. The Significance of Differences Part IV. Laws of Substitution Chapter 8. Substitution as Vice and Virtue Chapter 9. Universal Exchange Part V. Paradoxes of Generic Consumption Chapter 10. Liberating the Captive Consumer Chapter 11. Generic Consumption in the Clinic, Pharmacy, and Supermarket Part VI. The Generic Alternative Chapter 12. Science and Politics of the ""Me- Too"" Drug Chapter 13. Preferred Drugs, Public and Private Chapter 14. The Global Generic Conclusion. The Crisis of Similarity List of Abbreviations Notes Index"

Reviews

Greene turns the concept of generic as ho-hum on its head with this jam-packed survey of the effects culture, medicine, and politics have exerted on today's ubiquitous generic drugs for the last 50 years. Publishers Weekly


Greene turns the concept of generic as ho-hum on its head with this jam-packed survey of the effects culture, medicine, and politics have exerted on today's ubiquitous generic drugs for the last 50 years. Publishers Weekly Greene's brilliant book is the first full-length monograph to trace the history of how Americans think about generics, and it is going to be the key reference for many years to come. -- Stefan Ecks Somatosphere Jeremy Greene's Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine fascinates because the very meaning of the key term generic is so unstable. Every time the reader thinks they have a handle on its dimensions, another four open up. -- Joseph Dumit Somatosphere Greene's book is a dizzying historical-political-social-cultural account of the forms generic drugs have taken over past several decades. -- Todd Meyers Somatosphere This is an excellent and recommended history of how the generic drug market came to be. Library Journal


Author Information

Jeremy A. Greene, M.D., Ph.D., is associate professor of medicine and the history of medicine and the Elizabeth Treide and A. McGehee Harvey Chair in the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the author of Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease and coeditor of Prescribed: Writing, Filling, Using, and Abusing the Prescription in Modern America, both published by Johns Hopkins.

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