Stephen Straker Memorial Lecture

Straker Lecture: Sergio Sismondo, "Big Pharma's Invisible Hands", 7 Feb, 5 pm

, Please distribute widely

Sergio Sismondo

Professor of Philosophy and Sociology

Queen’s University

“Big Pharma’s Invisible Hands”

Thursday, 7 February 2019

5 to 6:30 pm

Buchanan A104

The themes for this talk are drawn from Professor Sismondo’s recent book, Ghost-Managed Medicine, about the regimes of knowledge and power in the modern medicine.  Here’s a portion of the description of the book: “Most agents for drug companies aim to tell the truth, but the truths they tell are drawn from streams of knowledge that have been fed, channeled and maintained by the companies at every possible opportunity. Especially because those companies have concentrated influence and narrow interests, consumers and others should be concerned about how epistemic power is distributed – or ‘political economies of knowledge’ – and not just about truth and falsity of medical knowledge.”

Sergio Sismondo is the author of Ghost-Managed Medicine: Big Pharma’s Invisible Hands (Mattering Press, 2018), An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies, 2nd ed. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), The Art of Science (with Boris Castel) (Broadview Press, 2003), and Science without Myth: On Constructions, Reality and Social Knowledge (SUNY Press, 1996). With Jeremy Greene, he edited The Pharmaceutical Studies Reader (Wiley, 2015). He is editor of Social Studies of Science, one of the leading Science and Technology Studies journals in the world.