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- Convenors:
-
Ushehwedu Kufakurinani
(University of Sussex)
Zoë Goodman (University of Warwick)
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- Format:
- Roundtable
- Sessions:
- Friday 21 January, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
We propose a roundtable that will examine and interrogate some of the successes and challenges of translating social science approaches to pharmaceuticals across disciplinary, professional and everyday boundaries.
Long Abstract:
The anthropology of pharmaceuticals has long established that medicines are much more than their active pharmaceutical ingredients (van der Geest et al 1996; Hayden 2012; Hardon and Sanabria 2017). While medical anthropologists and other social scientists may be well versed in the more-than-pharmacological lives of pharmaceuticals, communicating our findings to policy makers, activists, ordinary consumers and others we do research with, remains an enduring challenge. We propose a roundtable that will examine and interrogate some of the successes and challenges of translating social science approaches to pharmaceuticals across disciplinary, professional and everyday boundaries. We welcome reflections on best practices, research methodologies, creative outputs and media platforms, as well as success, strategies, struggles and ethical issues involved in communicating research that facilitates a more expansive dialogue about drugs between academics and other stakeholders. The roundtable primarily seeks to engage with the following questions: How have/could academics communicate and engage better with relevant stakeholders, regarding our research findings and perspectives on the more-than-pharmacological lives of pharmaceuticals? What methods of research can be deployed to deliver evidence and conclusions that help challenge prevailing assumptions about pharmaceuticals? What technologies, outputs and platforms might facilitate dialogue between academics and wider audiences? This roundtable is proposed by a group of scholars working on "fake" pharmaceuticals - we particularly hope to engage those working to communicate the more-than-pharmacological elements of both "fake" and "real" pharmaceuticals to diverse audiences.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 21 January, 2022, -Nishpriha Thakur (University of Warwick)
Paper short abstract:
I propose to study the processes of distribution employing anthropological methods and contest pharmaco-regulatory common-sense of fake-ness that privileges chemical composition above all else, and contribute to the growing literature on the STS, science studies and anthropology of pharmaceuticals.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is based on my research on how questions of quality and fake-ness animate Indian pharmaceutical firms’ trade with partners in a number of African countries. There is a widely held assumption that the ‘fake-ness’ of fake pharmaceuticals is down to the processes of manufacture. However, closer investigation reveals that ‘fakes’ may also be produced during the processes of distribution. This becomes evident when we look at Indian drugs’ journeys as constituted through their paperwork—we find that the processes of distribution alters drugs’ quality. Through distribution, rather than simply manufacture, drugs become sub-standard or, in the words of Indian pharmaceutical traders, ‘sub-legal.’ Particularly for Indian pharma in African markets, this disjuncture between manufacture and distribution matters because there is a corollary and widely held belief among international regulators that the quality of India’s exported drugs is uneven, or simply ‘low’ (WHO 2017; Nayyar et al 2015; Glass 2014, Johnston and Holt 2014; Almuzaini et al 2013).
I argue that it is in these drugs’ dossiers—the bundles of paperwork that testify to pharmaceutical quality and adherence to regulatory standards—where drugs’ ‘quality’ or ‘fake-ness’ is both produced and understood by both traders and those tasked with enforcing quality regulations. I suggest and propose that understanding the processes of distribution reveals how pharmaceuticals are labelled as fake/sub-standard/sub-legal from the outside (paperwork, labels) rather than the inside (chemical composition of the drug) and it challenges the prevailing notions about ‘fakeness’ of Indian pharmaceuticals.
Carine Baxerres (LPED IRDAix-Marseille Université)
Paper short abstract:
Anthropologist, I have studied the informal drug market in West Africa since early 2000’s. I will highlight how I have focus on national pharmaceutical systems and global drug circulations. I will describe moments of exchange with national regulatory authorities and the lessons I have learned.
Paper long abstract:
As a female anthropologist, I have been conducting research on the informal drug market in West Africa since the early 2000s, first in Senegal, then in Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso. I will highlight how from the informal market, I came to focus on national pharmaceutical systems and global drug circulations. I will emphasize how the differences in regulation between French and English speaking countries on these issues allow us to understand the economic and political stakes behind "fake medicines". I will relate different moments of exchange on these subjects with national regulatory authorities: from a doctoral research restitution in Benin, to the organization of an international colloquium in Benin and several restitutions in Benin and Ghana following a European research program. The lessons I have learned from this work are the difficulties I have experienced in making the results of this research heard by national regulatory authorities and, above all, in making them usable for political action. Beyond the question of gender and age, which, as a young woman researcher, does not facilitate the scaling up of research in West African contexts, these experiences lead me to believe that 1) the political agenda can hardly be attuned to social science research that highlights the complexity of social situations, 2) the usefulness of my research would be more easily highlighted through the production of video documentaries aimed at the general public, or even other forms of innovative writing in social sciences.
Rory Horner (University of Manchester)
Paper short abstract:
This intervention draws from the experience of an economic geographer researching pharmaceuticals in India and a number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa of the challenges and opportunities for boundary crossing.
Paper long abstract:
This intervention will draw on pharmaceuticals research which has traced the production of pharmaceuticals in India and their supply to a number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. From the perspective of an economic geographer, it will highlight some of the challenges in navigating such research contexts, as well as the opportunities and challenges of negotiating divides within and beyond academia for pharmaceuticals research. It is suggested that the significance and multi-dimensional nature of pharmaceuticals necessitates communication across traditional barriers, but also provides for exciting opportunities for connections across boundaries of various kinds.
Gopakumar Kapoori Madhavan (TWN)
Paper short abstract:
The use of the intellectual property (IP) and regulation to check the competition to maintain market dominance and profit. This paper examines the above strategy in the light of the WHO process to remove counterfeit medicione discussions.
Paper long abstract:
Pharmaceutical regulation is viewed as a scientific and technical issue and each stakeholder participating in the WHO process has its own interest in the issues. There is an absence of an agency to bring a more holistic approach by bringing the public interest aspects like political, economic, human rights analyses of the pharma regulation. Often discussions miss the historical evolution of the issue. The academic researcher could be able to bring these aspects to the attention of various stakeholders including the negotiators. The social science research outcomes often fail to provide influence with the WHO's norms and standard-setting process on pharmaceutical regulation.
Pharma regulation is accepted as a science and accepts it as it is without any interrogation. Researchers need to understand that regulation is not science but a set of norms and standards backed with certain scientific reasoning. This scientific rationale changes as science progress but the norms and standards may not necessarily follow the same speed. Further, like any norms and standard-setting process such as legislations pharmaceutical regulation is also susceptible to the influence of dominant actors. Therefore the assumption of regulation as science could lead to sub-optimal methodologies.
It could be improved :
• Following the process as an observer to understand the process
• Understanding the research gap in terms of evidence
• Identification and mapping of key stakeholders, which includes WHO staff
• Formal and informal interactions with stakeholders
• Dissemination of research outcomes including Briefing of research outcomes to various stakeholders including negotiators
Shalini Rudra (University of Warwick)
Paper short abstract:
The role pharmaceuticals play in saving lives is well known. However, the role pharmaceuticals play in making and breaking the career of various policy forums is less-known. This paper uses discourse around fakeness to understand how legal instruments advance and strengthen irrational fears.
Paper long abstract:
The legal response to counterfeit medicines is not bereft of politics serving the interests of certain groups. However, debunking such politics is unyielding and requires engaging with the narrative on fakeness which lends itself to scrutiny. Therefore using the discipline of history, this paper problematises the rise and deployment of ‘uncertainty’ surrounding fake medicines into certain legal response to counterfeit medicines and finds that a rich analysis emerge on how scientific and/or academic knowledge becomes complacent in such politics.