Adverse Events - (Anthropologies of American Medicine: Culture, Power, and Pra) by Jill a Fisher

The book "Adverse Events" is a groundbreaking exploration of the hidden world of pharmaceutical testing on healthy volunteers.

Drawing on two years of fieldwork in clinics across the country and 268 interviews with participants and staff, this book reveals how decisions to take part in such studies are often influenced by poverty and lack of employment opportunities.

It exposes how healthy participants are typically recruited from African American and Latino/a communities, and how they are often serial participants who obtain a significant portion of their income from these trials.

The book also highlights the important validity concerns inherent in this mode of testing new pharmaceuticals, as highly controlled studies bear little resemblance to real-world conditions, and everyone involved is incentivized to game the system, ultimately making new drugs appear safer than they really are.

This book provides an unprecedented view of the intersection of racial inequalities with pharmaceutical testing, signaling the dangers of this research enterprise to society as a whole.

If you're interested in understanding the complex issues surrounding drug development and the people involved in these studies, then "Adverse Events" is a must-read.