UCSF COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
HISTORY OF HEALTH SCIENCES PROGRAM
Wednesdays 10:00-12:00
Instructor: Liz Watkins
This course engages the growing body of scholarship on the history of pharmaceuticals and the expansion of the pharmaceutical enterprise in the 20th and 21st centuries. It will consider social, cultural, political, economic, and ethical issues raised by the development, regulation, marketing, prescription, and use of modern medicines. It will also explore the changing relationships between academia and industry, clinical practice and biomedical research, doctors and patients, health and disease.
- Identify the changes in drug regulatory policies in the United States and Western Europe
- Describe the interplay among scientific research, clinical practice, industrial sponsorship, and government oversight in the development of new drug products
- Understand how the expanding pharmacopeia has influenced the practice of medicine
- Analyze definitional relationships between drugs and diseases
- Explain the significance of the marketplace and the role of the patient-consumer in the production, prescription, and consumption of drugs
- Critically evaluate both primary source materials and secondary literature relating to the history of pharmaceuticals
- Evaluate problems inherent in the historical record and apply analytical skills to the interpretation of complex, ambiguous, and incomplete materials relating to the construction of pharmaceutical culture
|
