ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the marketing of modern medicines. The chapter presents concerns about medicalization that emerged in the 1970s, and offer critical analyses of the more recent global marketing of lifestyle drugs. This trend has been referred to as disease mongering, though medical directors of pharmaceutical companies prefer to describe it as awareness raising. In the following case study, Julia Hornberger shows how global programs against counterfeit medicines are implemented in a local police station in Johannesburg, and so how security, health and safety interplay. Scholarly attention has focused on the production, prescription, and promotion of Western medicine. Another case study in this chapter, Laurent Pordi describes how an Indian company reformulated an ancient Ayurvedic liver remedy, Liv52, into a new product called Party Smart. In the last case study in this chapter, consider the role of local distributors selling various herbal medication and nutrition supplements, which are relatively unregulated compared to pharmaceuticals.
