In this Book
Pandemics, Pills, and Politics: Governing Global Health Security
Book
2018
Published by:
Johns Hopkins University Press
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

summary
The fascinating story of Tamiflu's development and stockpiling against global health threats.orld's most prominent medical countermeasure, Tamiflu.A pill can strengthen national security? The suggestion may seem odd, but many states around the world believe precisely that. Confronted with pandemics, bioterrorism, and emerging infectious diseases, governments are transforming their security policies to include the proactive development, acquisition, stockpiling, and mass distribution of new pharmaceutical defenses. What happens—politically, economically, and socially—when governments try to protect their populations with pharmaceuticals? How do competing interests among states, pharmaceutical companies, regulators, and scientists play out in the quest to develop new medical countermeasures? And do citizens around the world ultimately stand to gain or lose from this pharmaceuticalization of security policy?Stefan Elbe explores these complex questions in Pandemics, Pills, and Politics, the first in-depth study of the world’s most prominent medical countermeasure, Tamiflu. Taken by millions of people around the planet in the fight against pandemic flu, Tamiflu has provoked suspicions about undue commercial influence in government decision-making about stockpiles. It even found itself at the center of a prolonged political battle over who should have access to the data about the safety and effectiveness of medicines.Pandemics, Pills, and Politics shows that the story of Tamiflu harbors deeper lessons about the vexing political, economic, legal, social, and regulatory tensions that emerge as twenty-first-century security policy takes a pharmaceutical turn. At the heart of this issue, Elbe argues, lies something deeper: the rise of a new molecular vision of life that is reshaping the world we live in.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraphs
Contents
pp. ix-x
Preface
pp. xi-xii
Acknowledgments
pp. xiii-xiv
List of Abbreviations
1. Encapsulating Security: Pharmaceutical Defenses against Biological Danger
pp. 1-28
Part One: The Development Challenges
2. Discovering a Virusâs Achilles Heel: Flu Fighting at the Molecular Scale
pp. 31-53
3. The Pill Always Wins: Gilead Sciences, Roche, and the Birth of Tamiflu
pp. 54-76
Part Two: The Acquisition Challenges
4. What a Difference a Day Makes: The Margin Call for Regulatory Agencies
pp. 79-105
5. Virtual Blockbuster: Bird Flu and the Pandemic of Preparedness Planning
pp. 106-133
Part Three: The Deployment Challenges
6. In the Eye of the Storm: Global Access, Generics, and Intellectual Property
pp. 137-162
7. âOde to Tamifluâ: Side Effects, Teenage âSuicides,â and Corporate Liabilities
pp. 163-183
8. Data Backlash: Roche and Cochrane Square Up over Clinical Trial Data
pp. 184-210
9. âTo Boldly Go â¦â: Pharmaceutical Enterprises and Global Health Security
pp. 211-232
Epilogue: Pharmaceuticals, Security, and Molecular Life
pp. 233-236
References
pp. 237-253
Index
pp. 255-261
ISBN | 9781421428772 |
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Related ISBN(s) | 9781421425580, 9781421425597 |
DOI | 10.1353/book.59674![]() |
MARC Record | Download |
OCLC | 1035556715 |
Pages | 280 |
Launched on MUSE | 2018-07-22 |
Language | English |
Open Access | Yes |
Creative Commons | CC-BY-NC-ND |