Prescribing by Numbers
Drugs and the Definition of Disease
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Johns Hopkins University Press
Published:25th Nov '08
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
An insightful, engrossing exploration of how our notions of 'disease' have evolved-with profound implications for understanding the health care of today and tomorrow. -- Jerry Avorn, M.D, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, author of Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs What is remarkable about this book is not just the grace and assurance of Greene's writing, but the way Greene combines an insider's view of medical practice and pharmaceutical marketing with much broader social currents. It is an extraordinarily impressive work of scholarship. -- Carl Elliott, M.D., Ph.D., University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics, author of Better than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream Greene's historical account of our brave new world of drug-driven risk reduction is troubling and calls for some response. Both the scholarly depth and balanced tone of Prescribing by Numbers suggests that rather than simply rooting out bad actors and unethical practices, we must grapple with the very values and structural forces that are central to medical care and health today. -- Robert Aronowitz, M.D., History and Sociology of Science Department, University of Pennsylvania
Rather, his provocative and comprehensive analysis sheds light on the increasing presence of the subjectively healthy but highly medicated individual in the American medical landscape, suggesting how historical analysis can help to address the problems inherent in the program of pharmaceutical prevention.Greene provides suggestions on how to address some of the problems inherent in medical prevention.
Greene provides suggestions on how to address some of the problems inherent in medical prevention. Choice 2007 Shows how the process of defining disease 'illustrates the porous relationship between the science and the marketing of health care.' -- Nina C. Ayub Chronicle of Higher Education 2007 A gripping story... Greene warns us in his superb book that things are not always as they are claimed. -- Howard Spiro Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine 2007 This is, I believe, one of the best, and most significant, books published recently on the development of medical practice and the pharmaceutical industry in the USA in the second half of the twentieth century. -- Judy Slinn Social History of Medicine 2007 Greene focuses on the question of how public health priorities became closely aligned with the pharmaceutical industry's marketing practices... Offers a nuanced description of the development of 'therapeutics of risk reduction' with multiple lines of influence, subtle power shifts, and gains and losses for patients and physicians. -- Arthur Daemmrich Chemical Heritage 2008 Greene describes the relationship between advances in treatment, the incentives of manufacturers, and the effect on the public of increased attention to prevention... The risk-benefit trade-offs of the quantitative approach are complex, and Greene's historical revelations are timely. -- Kevin A. Schulman, M.D. New England Journal of Medicine 2007 The interaction between medical science and industry has been fruitfully explored by several excellent historians... but Greene's intricate narratives extend their work. -- Marcia Meldrum Isis 2008 I heartily recommend this book. -- Toine Pieters Medical History 2008 By the end of Prescribing by Numbers, one realizes it is an excellent book to think with. Greene uses his case studies to juxtapose the therapeutics of risk with more contemporary health dilemmas. -- Gregory J. Higby Pharmacy in History 2009 Greene's nuanced and lucid research yields new insight into the mechanisms that linked specific medications to the management of particular chronic diseases in the postwar era. -- Cynthia A. Connolly, PhD, RN Nursing History Review 2011
- Winner of Society for Social Studies of Science: Rachel Carson Prize 2009 (United States)
ISBN: 9780801891007
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 22mm
Weight: 454g
336 pages