Interrogating the Hegemony of Biomedicine

Pharmocracy: Value, Politics and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine confronts the relationships between power and global biomedical regimes squarely. In the process, it brings to the forefront the political economy of global production, distribution and consumption of biomedical drugs in the 21st century. Its principal problematic is to understand, as the author points out at the beginning, global therapeutic regimes within a democratic political system, however contingent the site of that democracy might appear. In effect, therefore, it interrogates the manifestly powerful influence of the global biomedical behemoths that operate within the global South, and particularly in India. The problematic is an enduring one: ever since the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement (2005) in deference to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) recommendation, the landscape of the Indian pharmaceutical industry and market has transformed entirely, with patent laws being tightened so as to make any informal transfer of technology impossible.

Global Biomedicine