Dominique A Tobbell - Pills, Power, and Policy: The Struggle for Drug Reform in Cold War America and Its Consequences

CALIFORNIA/MILBANK BOOKS ON HEALTH AND THE PUBLIC

1. The Corporate Practice of Medicine: Competition and Innovation in Health Care, by James C. Robinson

2. Experiencing Politics: A Legislators Stories of Government and Health Care, by John E. McDonough

3. Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint, by Lawrence O. Gostin (revised and expanded second edition, 2008)

4. Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader, edited by Lawrence O. Gostin (revised and updated second edition, 2010)

5. Big Doctoring in America: Profiles in Primary Care, by Fitzhugh Mullan, M.D.

6. Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner

7. Death Is That Man Taking Names: Intersections of American Medicine, Law, and Culture, by Robert A. Burt

8. When Walking Fails: Mobility Problems of Adults with Chronic Conditions, by Lisa I. Iezzoni

9. What Price Better Health? Hazards of the Research Imperative, by Daniel Callahan

10. Sick to Death and Not Going to Take It Anymore! Reforming Health Care for the Last Years of Life, by Joanne Lynn

11. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974: A Political History, by James A. Wooten

12. Evidence-Based Medicine and the Search for a Science of Clinical Care, by Jeanne Daly

13. Disease and Democracy: The Industrialized World Faces AIDS, by Peter Baldwin

14. Medicare Matters: What Geriatric Medicine Can Teach American Health Care, by Christine K. Cassel

15. Are We Ready? Public Health since 9/11, by David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz

16. State of Immunity: The Politics of Vaccination in Twentieth-Century America, by James Colgrove

17. Low Income, Social Growth, and Good Health: A History of Twelve Countries, by James C. Riley

18. Searching Eyes: Privacy, the State, and Disease Surveillance in America, by Amy L. Fairchild, Ronald Bayer, and James Colgrove

19. The Health Care Revolution: From Medical Monopoly to Market Competition, by Carl F. Ameringer

20. Real Collaboration: What It Takes for Global Health to Succeed, by Mark L. Rosenberg, Elisabeth S. Hayes, Margaret H. McIntyre, and Nancy Neill

21. House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox, by William H. Foege

22. Inside National Health Reform, by John E. McDonough

23. Pills, Power, and Policy: The Struggle for Drug Reform in Cold War America and Its Consequences, by Dominique A. Tobbell

Pills, Power, and Policy

The Struggle for Drug Reform in Cold War America and Its Consequences

DOMINIQUE A. TOBBELL

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu .

The Milbank Memorial Fund is an endowed operating foundation that engages in nonpartisan analysis, study, research, and communication on significant issues in health policy. In the Funds own publications, in reports, films, or books it publishes with other organizations, and in articles it commissions for publication by other organizations, the Fund endeavors to maintain the highest standards for accuracy and fairness. Statements by individual authors, however, do not necessarily reflect opinions or factual determinations of the Fund. For more information, visit www.milbank.org .

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

2012 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tobbell, Dominique A., 1978.

Pills, power, and policy : the struggle for drug reform in cold war America and its consequences / Dominique A. Tobbell.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9780-520271135 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 9780-520271142 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. DrugsResearchUnited StatesHistory20th century. 2. Pharmaceutical industryUnited StatesHistory20th century. I. Title. II. Series: California/Milbank books on health and the public.

[DNLM: 1. Drug IndustryhistoryUnited States. 2. Economics, PharmaceuticalUnited States. 3. History, 20th CenturyUnited States. QV 711 AA1]

RS122.T59 2012

338.476151dc22

2011014878

Manufactured in the United States of America

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on 50-pound Enterprise, a 30% post-consumer-waste, recycled, deinked fiber that is processed chlorine-free. It is acid-free and meets all ANSI/NISO (Z 39.48) requirements.

To my teachers

The Milbank Memorial Fund is an endowed operating foundation that works to improve health by helping decision makers in the public and private sectors acquire and use the best available evidence to inform policy for health care and population health. The Fund has engaged in nonpartisan analysis, study, research, and communication since its inception in 1905.

Pills, Power, and Policy: The Struggle for Drug Reform in Cold War America and Its Consequences by Dominique Tobbell is the twenty-third book in the series of California/Milbank Books on Health and the Public. The publishing partnership between the Fund and the University of California Press encourages the synthesis and communication of findings from research and experience that could contribute to more effective health policy.

In Pills, Power, and Policy, Tobbell examines how complex relationships forged with key players in the medical community by the pharmaceutical industry since the Second World War contributed to the industrys growth and created a political backing that would support it in the face of governmental reform efforts, while simultaneously influencing both academic research and pharmaceutical policy. Tobbell describes how both the criticisms raised against the pharmaceutical industry and the industrys defense have endured and are remarkably similar today. Tobbell also reveals how not only the industry but also Congress, the FDA, universities, medical schools, physicians, and researchers have all had a political, social, and financial interest in maintaining the status quo in pharmaceutical policy.

Tobbells rich history of pharmaceutical politics will provide compelling reading to scholars and students of political science, the history of medicine and of business, pharmacology, and clinical epidemiology, and informed instruction to policymakers grappling with the current crisis in drug development and regulation.

Carmen Hooker Odom

President, Milbank Memorial Fund

Samuel L. Milbank

Chairman, Milbank Memorial Fund

I was in my final year of high school in England when I decided I wanted to write a book that would help advance the publics understanding of science. In the years since then, I have benefited enormously from the guidance, encouragement, and mentorship of inspirational teachers who have nurtured this commitment, influenced my intellectual development, and helped make that book a reality. It is to these teachers, particularly my high school biology teacher, Joy Hopkinson, that I dedicate this book.