233046 SE The politics of pharmaceutical innovation (2022W)

The past years have, once again, brought issues of pharmaceutical innovation closer to public attention, and has sparked the research interest of scholars in STS and adjacent fields to study the politics of innovation that underpins pharmaceutical research, development, commercialization and consumption.

In common understandings, ‘pharmaceutical innovation’ is often used simply as a shorthand either for the process of bringing ‘new drugs to the market’ (thus putting the emphasis on technoscientific criteria and commercial relevance); or pharmaceutical innovation is equated with therapeutic progress – i.e. new, better therapies (thus putting the emphasis on patients’ needs and clinical relevance).

This seminar seeks to unpack these narrow notions of pharmaceutical innovation and explore critical sites and processes of the politics that shape the production, commercialization and consumption of pharmaceuticals. Building on groundwork in STS, we will approach ‘innovation’ as a boundary object that articulates the spheres of science and the economy, respectively. In the pharmaceutical field, innovation therefore can be studied through the frictions, conflicts and contradictions generated by the tensions between clinical and commercial relevance, between medicine and the market, and between technical and therapeutic meanings of innovation. What is at stake in innovation, then, are questions of values – and how values are articulated alongside different registries (therapeutic, commercial, scientific, ethical etc. value).

Zeroing in on the nexus between knowledge production and value generation in the pharmaceutical sector, we will analyze the multiple conflicts over the ways novel pharmaceuticals were to be produced and put to use – in scientific, economic, and ethical terms. We will explore and attend to different cases, processes and venues where medicines are designed, tested, manufactured, traded, consumed, where knowledge claims about their safety and efficacy are articulated and contested, and where their differential values as public goods and commercial commodities are problematized. These questions include, for instance:

How are the relations between biomedical research, the pharmaceutical industry and state authorities structured?
What are the stakes in bringing new drugs to the market – scientifically, clinically, economically, and politically?
How is the research and development of new drugs organized globally?
What makes a new drug treatment ‘innovative’, and does innovative drug always mean better treatment for patients?
How is drug development and marketization regulated, and what scientific and political authorities are capable of assuming responsibility in case of serious adverse events?
What is the role of intellectual property regimes, patents, shareholder value and monopoly in the political economies of drug research and innovation?
How are the relations between governments and industry problematized and (re-)negotiated in times of serious public health emergencies (such as the HIV/AIDS crisis or the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic), when there is an acute need for effective drugs or vaccines?

Aims
Develop a research specialization in politics of innovation by focusing the particular empirical field of pharmaceuticals
Develop a solid overview of the field of social studies of pharmaceuticals by engaging with key STS-informed literature
Advance academic research and writing skills by working on an individual research-based term paper focusing on a particular aspect or dimension of the global politics of pharmaceutical innovation

Methods
Learning through literature study of key aspects of pharmaceutical innovation. This seminar is designed as a reading-intensive course. An interest in conceptual debates is a prerequisite for the seminar. The focus is on reading and working through the obligatory literature (quickly “reading through” the texts will not be enough).