The Library
The case of the spurious drugs kingpin : shifting pills in Chennai, India
Tools
Hodges, Sarah (2019) The case of the spurious drugs kingpin : shifting pills in Chennai, India. Critical Public Health, 29 (4). pp. 473-483. doi:10.1080/09581596.2019.1593948 ISSN 1469-3682.
|
PDF
WRAP-case-spurious-drugs-kingpin-shifting-pills-Chennai-India-Hodges-2019.pdf - Published Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (889Kb) | Preview |
|
PDF
WRAP-case-spurious-drugs-kingpin-Hodges-2019.pdf - Accepted Version Embargoed item. Restricted access to Repository staff only - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (1216Kb) |
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2019.1593948
Abstract
This paper recounts the tale of a ‘Spurious Drugs Kingpin’ and his scandalous business empire of relabelling and recirculating expired medicines in the south Indian city of Chennai. At the time the story broke, in the first half of 2010, questions of drug safety dominated media headlines and public discussion. However, a closer investigation suggests a more complicated picture. While relabelling expired medicines was certainly a crime, it is far from clear if their relabelling and subsequent redistribution constituted a public health danger. If actually existing unsafe drugs did not fuel this drug safety scandal, what did? I argue this case illuminates two things: (1) the illusory nature of certainties about drug safety and (2) how ambiguity about the safety of expired drugs facilitates policing not of relations within the pharmacological world, but instead of social and economic relations. This episode matters because it illuminates how, within apparent attempts to police the safety of circulation of drugs, drugs themselves are neither subject nor object, but instead the ground upon which market battles are waged.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor R Medicine > RM Therapeutics. Pharmacology |
||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Drugs -- India -- Chennai -- Safety measures, Pharmaceutical policy -- India -- Chennai, Pharmaceutical industry -- Corrupt practices -- India -- Chennai | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Critical Public Health | ||||||
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis | ||||||
ISSN: | 1469-3682 | ||||||
Official Date: | 4 June 2019 | ||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||
Volume: | 29 | ||||||
Number: | 4 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 473-483 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1080/09581596.2019.1593948 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 23 May 2019 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 25 June 2019 | ||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
|
||||||
Related URLs: |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year