 The pipeline and the porcupine: alternate metaphors of the physician-industry relationshipCharles Mather Social Science & Medicine, 2005, vol. 60, issue 6, 1323-1334 Abstract: Industry and medicine share a complicated relationship that engenders a considerable degree of controversy. Although they share a relationship, industry and medicine have different perspectives toward their involvement with each other. Industry conceives of medicine as one aspect of the "drug pipeline", a larger set of relationships that is necessary for producing and marketing products. In contrast, select physicians refer to medicine's relationship with industry as "dancing with the porcupine", an inherently difficult and dangerous activity. This paper compares the "pipeline" and "porcupine" metaphors, and draws upon ethnographic data from fieldwork conducted among clinical neuroscientists at a Canadian medical school to further elucidate the perspectives of physicians toward industry and the nature of the physician-industry relationship. The paper argues that the physician-industry relationship is akin to a type of gift-exchange known as a total prestation, and that this form of total prestation is part of a strategy of capital reconversion. Keywords: Pharmaceuticals; Gift; exchange; Cultural; capital; Physician-industry; relationship; Canada (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:60:y:2005:i:6:p:1323-1334 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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