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The case of the spurious drugs kingpin : shifting pills in Chennai, India

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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

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2019.1593948

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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:
DateEvent
4 June 2019Published
3 March 2019Accepted
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
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant:
Project/Grant IDRIOXX Funder NameFunder ID
[205362/Z/16/ZWellcome Trusthttp://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010269
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