Subject(s)
Ethics , National Socialism , Prejudice , Publishing , Humans , Ethics/history , Ethics, Medical/history , Germany , History, 20th Century , Medicine , National Socialism/history , Prejudice/ethics , Prejudice/ethnology , Prejudice/history , Propaganda , Publishing/ethics , Publishing/history , Publishing/standards , Science/ethics , Science/history , Systemic Racism/ethics , Systemic Racism/ethnology , Systemic Racism/history , United States , Human Rights/ethics , Human Rights/historySubject(s)
COVID-19 Vaccines , COVID-19/prevention & control , Communicable Disease Control/organization & administration , Epidemics/history , International Cooperation , Leadership , Public Health Practice , COVID-19/epidemiology , Communicable Disease Control/history , Epidemics/prevention & control , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Humans , Immunization, Secondary , Influenza Pandemic, 1918-1919/history , Politics , Public Health Practice/history , Public Opinion , Treatment OutcomeABSTRACT
Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) have become a widely embraced policy to address the US opioid crisis. Despite mixed scientific evidence on their effectiveness at improving health and reducing overdose deaths, 49 states and Washington, DC have adopted PDMPs, and they have received strong bipartisan legislative support. This article explores the history of PDMPs, tracking their evolution from paper-based administrative databases in the early 1900s to modern-day electronic systems that intervene at the point of care. We focus on two questions: how did PDMPs become so widely adopted in the United States, and how did they gain popularity as an intervention in the contemporary opioid crisis? Through this historical approach, we evaluate what PDMPs reflect about national drug policy and broader cultural understandings of substance use disorder in the United States today. (Am J Public Health. 2020;110:1191-1197. 10.2105/AJPH.2020.305696).
Subject(s)
Prescription Drug Misuse , Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs/history , Public Health , Analgesics, Opioid/adverse effects , Drug Overdose/prevention & control , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Humans , Policy , Prescription Drug Misuse/history , Prescription Drug Misuse/prevention & control , United StatesSubject(s)
Betacoronavirus , Coronavirus Infections , Epidemics/prevention & control , Health Planning , Language , Pandemics , Pneumonia, Viral , COVID-19 , Coronavirus Infections/epidemiology , Coronavirus Infections/prevention & control , Coronavirus Infections/transmission , Epidemics/history , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Humans , Pandemics/prevention & control , Pneumonia, Viral/epidemiology , Pneumonia, Viral/prevention & control , Pneumonia, Viral/transmission , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
Confronted by compelling peer-reviewed scientific evidence of the harms of smoking, the tobacco industry, beginning in the 1950s, used sophisticated public relations approaches to undermine and distort the emerging science. The industry campaign worked to create a scientific controversy through a program that depended on the creation of industry-academic conflicts of interest. This strategy of producing scientific uncertainty undercut public health efforts and regulatory interventions designed to reduce the harms of smoking. A number of industries have subsequently followed this approach to disrupting normative science. Claims of scientific uncertainty and lack of proof also lead to the assertion of individual responsibility for industrially produced health risks.
Subject(s)
Conflict of Interest , Tobacco Industry/history , Biomedical Research/history , History, 20th Century , Humans , Mass Media , Research Support as Topic , Smoking/adverse effects , Smoking/history , Tobacco Industry/ethics , Tobacco Industry/legislation & jurisprudenceSubject(s)
Government Regulation , Smoking/legislation & jurisprudence , Tobacco Industry/legislation & jurisprudence , United States Food and Drug Administration , Advertising/history , Advertising/legislation & jurisprudence , History, 20th Century , Liability, Legal , Smoking/history , Smoking Prevention , United StatesABSTRACT
In the 1930s and 1940s, smoking became the norm for both men and women in the United States, and a majority of physicians smoked. At the same time, there was rising public anxiety about the health risks of cigarette smoking. One strategic response of tobacco companies was to devise advertising referring directly to physicians. As ad campaigns featuring physicians developed through the early 1950s, tobacco executives used the doctor image to assure the consumer that their respective brands were safe. These advertisements also suggested that the individual physicians' clinical judgment should continue to be the arbiter of the harms of cigarette smoking even as systematic health evidence accumulated. However, by 1954, industry strategists deemed physician images in advertisements no longer credible in the face of growing public concern about the health evidence implicating cigarettes.