Description
Book SynopsisOnly by understanding the historical forces that have shaped our current situation, Podolsky argues, can we properly understand and frame our choices moving forward.
Trade ReviewThe author deftly handles the debates that festered around the appropriate roles of industry, clinicians and government in the production and use of antibiotics... The work is scholarly, exceptionally well researched, and worthy of serious examination for those interested in past, current and future efforts to frame and inform the public about antibiotic-resistant bacteria. -- John S. Haller, Jr. Pharmacy in History This remarkable book ultimately shows that antibiotic resistance is an issue of huge cultural import that spans many disciplinary areas and which cannot be completely understood in all its significance without understanding its history: it is surely necessary to know the molecular details of the biological processes through which microbes acquire resistance; but it is also necessary to understand the conflict between the various social forces that shaped the debate concerning the misuse, abuse and overuse of antibiotics. The book accomplishes this latter result formidably well. -- Davide Vecchi Metapsychology ... this book is a fascinating reminder that the benefits of antibiotics were squandered right from the beginning of the antibiotic era. -- Roger Poole The Pharmaceutical Journal The Antibiotic Era is about more than just antibiotics per se: it is also a rich and deeply thoughtful exploration of the contested process by which notions of therapeutic rationality have been developed, enacted, and resisted. As such, it should be read by both historians and other scholars of recent American medicine and by those interested in the use and misuse of antibiotics more broadly. -- Joseph M. Gabriel Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences With access to a wide range of archives from government agencies and academia, Podolsky takes us through a host of conferences, councils, courts, congressional hearings, symposia and task forces to reveal the tensions that grew since the 1940s between the pharmaceutical industry and medical academia, patients and doctors, and government and the media concerning over-marketed and irrationally prescribed antibiotics. -- Roger Poole The Pharmaceutical Journal Podolsky's historical accounts challenge readers to be mindful of what continue to be serious concerns within the global public health system. Choice The need for an assessment such as The Antibiotic Era has never been greater... This book's value will only increase over time, and is recommended beyond health collections alone. Midwest Book Review The Antibiotic Era should be mandatory reading for those in the medical profession and is well worth the steep learning curve for those with an interest in the field but from a different background. Inside Story ... an in-depth and well researched book. Nursing Times This book is carefully researched and persuasively argued... it is a fascinating historical analysis... Nursing Times We can thank the author for the effort and hope the lessons are duly noted and learned. This is an essential addition to every academic library in the health care professions. Watermark Readers unfamiliar with the new pharma history will find The Antibiotic Era an excellent introduction to the field, while those well read in the subject will find plenty to hold their interest. Social History of Medicine [Podolsky] brilliantly reconstructs the history of how the debate on antibiotics regulation was crucial in the making of drug regulation legislation in the USA...The Antibiotics Era is an excellent book and it will clearly become a reference for all scholars interested in the history of twentieth-century medicine and drug relation. British Journal for the History of Science ... this is a fabulous book. This title contributes to a fundamental shift in the writing of the history of medicine. It tackles issues of therapeutics, and it also narrates the contemporary history of medicine, for which actors, debates, and interests are similar to those today. Scott Podolsky deserves praise as one of the drivers of this fundamental shift in the way the history of medicine is written. This publication deserves to gain the widest possible readership. Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Origins of Antibiotic Reform
2. Antibiotics and the Invocation of the Controlled Clinical Trial
3. From Sigmamycin to Panalba
4. "Rational" Therapeutics and the Limits to Delimitation
5. Responding to Antibotic Resistance
Conclusion
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index
