Faculty and Research

Arthur Daemmrich is an assistant professor in the Business, Government and the International Economy Unit and a faculty member of the HBS Healthcare Initiative. His research examines science, medicine and the state, with a focus on advancing theories of risk and regulation through empirical research on the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and chemical sectors.

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Featured Work

Risk Frameworks: Distributed Regulation of Synthetic Chemicals

This research argues that new technologies for tracking synthetic chemicals in humans, advances in toxicology, and greater mobilization by environmental non-government organizations (NGOs) on chemical exposure are combining to undermine risk frameworks and regulatory systems established in recent decades. The very definition of risk used in regulatory decisions is at play as a result of emerging measures of chemicals in bodies at parts per billion or below. In an article published in the peer-reviewed journal, Environmental History (vol. 13, 2008, pp. 684-94) and in forthcoming publications, Daemmrich finds that a two-part shift is underway: first, from regulating chemicals by physical location to regulating them by chemical reaction; second, from defining risk as a function of exposure to chemicals to basing it on the presence of compounds in the body. Regulating chemicals by location relied on clear delineations between industry and government, with central control and oversight by federal agencies producing visible environmental and human health benefits. Regulating chemicals by reaction will involve distributed controls and requires greater cooperation among interested parties to define standards, carry out biomonitoring, and make policy decisions that draw on test results. Drawing on the historical trajectory of changing regulatory methods, this work advances a regulatory framework that involves collaborative testing programs and information sharing among industry, NGOs, and government agencies.

Pharmacopolitics: Drug Regulation in the United States and Germany

Advocates of rapid access to medicines and critics fearful of inadequate testing both argue that globalization will supersede national medical practices and result in the easy transfer of pharmaceuticals around the world. In Pharmacopolitics, Arthur Daemmrich challenges their assumptions by comparing drug laws, clinical trials, and systems for monitoring adverse reactions in the United States and Germany, two countries with similarly advanced systems for medical research, testing, and patient care. Daemmrich argues that divergent "therapeutic cultures"--the interrelationships among governments, patients, the medical profession, and the pharmaceutical industry--underlie national differences and explain variations in pharmaceutical markets and medical care. Pharmacopolitics carries the United States-Germany comparison from 1950 to the present through case studies of Terramycin (an antibiotic), thalidomide (a sedative), propranolol (a heart medication), interleukin-2 (a cancer therapy), and indinavir (an AIDS drug). Daemmrich points to different political constructions of "the patient" in the United States and Germany to clarify important differences in government policies and in the distribution of power among key social actors, and advises that international regulatory harmonization and globalization in medicine must retain flexibility for variation among medical cultures.

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