Acknowledgments  ix

List of Illustrations  xi

Introduction  1

1. Responding to Facts  27

2. Pharmaceutical Witnessing and Direct-to-Consumer Advertising  55

3. Having to Grow Medicine  87

4. Mass Health: Illness Is a Line You Cross  105

5. Moving the Lines: Deciding on Thresholds  135

6. Knowing Your Numbers: Pharmaceutical Lifestyles  181

Conclusion. Living in a World of Surplus Health: Frequently Asked Questions  197

Notes  219

References  239

Index  257

“Although its topic is an abstract one, much of Drugs for Life consists of insightful readings of advertisements, of statements by marketers and of patients' accounts. Dumit has pulled together a tremendous number of telling arguments and phrases, and can be at his best when reading them.”—Sergio Sismondo, Times Higher Education

“A rich and valuable contribution to literature on medical ethics, cultural studies, and the sociology of medicine. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.”—A. W. Klink, Choice

“Dumit has written a strongly critical book about the strength of drug companies and their methods of promoting use of their products.” —Chris Sterling, CBQ

“Dumit manages to weave together complicated issues surrounding health, profit, public attitudes and the rhetoric of health in a way that creates and understanding of medication and pharmaceutical companies in Drugs for Life.”—Hennie Weiss, Metapsychology Online Review

“Thought-provoking and chilling. . . . All registered nurses would . . . benefit from his analysis.”—Lucia Hwang, National Nurse

“Although its topic is an abstract one, much of Drugs for Life consists of insightful readings of advertisements, of statements by marketers and of patients' accounts. Dumit has pulled together a tremendous number of telling arguments and phrases, and can be at his best when reading them.”—Sergio Sismondo, Times Higher Education

“A rich and valuable contribution to literature on medical ethics, cultural studies, and the sociology of medicine. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.”—A. W. Klink, Choice

“Dumit has written a strongly critical book about the strength of drug companies and their methods of promoting use of their products.” —Chris Sterling, CBQ

“Dumit manages to weave together complicated issues surrounding health, profit, public attitudes and the rhetoric of health in a way that creates and understanding of medication and pharmaceutical companies in Drugs for Life.”—Hennie Weiss, Metapsychology Online Review

“Thought-provoking and chilling. . . . All registered nurses would . . . benefit from his analysis.”—Lucia Hwang, National Nurse

"In this provocative and important book, Joseph Dumit brings a new approach to bear on critiques of the pharmaceutical industry and U.S. healthcare. He marshals ethnographic research among drug company executives and marketing strategists, along with the analysis of scientific and popular representations of their products, showing how consumers have been tutored into a proactive stance toward health. Over the past few decades, we have come to live by 'the numbers' and 'risk factors' that make embracing lifelong pharmaceutical regimes seem like common sense. But is it? Dumit explores the pharmaceuticalization of American culture and consciousness with a light, accessible touch that belies the depth of his knowledge."—Rayna Rapp, author of Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America

"Drugs for Life is simply superb, a major accomplishment in the study of pharmaceuticals and their expanding relation to life itself. There is no recent scholarly work that attempts or accomplishes what Joseph Dumit does here, tackling the relation between big pharma and clinical epistemology in such a comprehensive and satisfying way. He deftly links critical debates across the life and human sciences, making an important and compelling argument on a matter central to contemporary public debate."—Lawrence Cohen, author of No Aging in India: Alzheimer’s, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things

"Drugs for Life shocks the reader into seeing health, medicine, pharmaceuticals, and the pharmaceutical industry and drug research for what they are from a cultural standpoint: a new framing of the future world for all of us. And that future is now and troubling and transformative of human conditions. A remarkable contribution that will perturb and disturb professional and general readers."—Arthur Kleinman, coeditor of Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices

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