 | Pharmaceutical Research, Democracy and Conspiracy: International Clinical Trials in Local Medical Institutions Subjects: Economics Finance Business & Industry; Health and Social Care; Politics & International Relations; Social Sciences; Business Management and Accounting; Industry & Industrial Studies; Nursing; International Relations; Sociology & Social Policy; International Business; Management of Technology & Innovation; Law Ethics and Professional Values; Global Governance; Sociology of Science & Technology; Corporate Social Responsibility & Business Ethics; Public & Nonprofit Management; Manufacturing Industries; Medical Sociology; Clinical trials used to be conducted overwhelmingly in the US and Europe but for a range of economic, technical and ethical reasons, the number of multicentre studies recruiting subjects in different regions of the World has grown exponentially. New medicines are tested in vast research networks involving several countries, hospitals and other medical institutions, and hundreds of individual subjects. In Pharmaceutical Research, Democracy and Conspiracy, Edison Bicudo examines the connections between global and local scales, exploring how it is possible for social actors as different as global companies and patients of local hospitals to come together and establish social relationships that may last many years. He also identifies the implications of these global-local relationships for the financial, technical and cultural structures of the participating hospitals. His study draws on fieldwork conducted in five countries: the UK, Spain, France, Brazil and South Africa. Shining a light on the social mediations that enable the encounter between these rationalities, the author concludes that this has the practical effect of subjecting countries hosting trials to institutional engineering. Hospitals and research agencies create new, sometimes surprising, institutional arrangements to cope with international research projects, which change relations between physicians and patients, as they acquire new roles as clinical investigators and research subjects. Frequently, such shifts deviate the institutional structures of medical institutions away from democratic, and towards conspiratorial, schemes. The book reviews the concept of mediation in sociological thought, proposes further developments in Habermas' theory of communicative action, and offers some political reflection about the role of institutions in contemporary democracies. As a researcher, Edison Bicudo developed several studies in Brazilian institutions, exploring the fields of sociology, geography, politics and cultural studies. In his personal projects, he has been interested in health technologies and their impacts on the organization of society and geographical space. His previous studies focused on the production of medicines (Master's Degree at the University of São Paulo, Brazil) and the biotechnological activities conducted in the European Union (Master's Degree at the University Paris 1, France). In his PhD study, ethics committees and the international clinical trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies are focused on. Drawing attention to the situations of South Africa and Brazil, Edison looks at ethics committees as institutions promoting several ideological blends. The author's main theoretical framework is the theory of communicative action proposed by German sociologist Jürgen Habermas, as well as the geographical theory formulated by Brazilian geographer Milton Santos. |
