Sociological interest in pharmaceuticals has intensified, heightening awareness of ‘pharmaceuticalization’. It is argued that pharmaceuticalization should be understood by reference to five main biosociological explanatory factors: biomedicalism, medicalization, pharmaceutical industry promotion and marketing, consumerism, and regulatory-state ideology or policy. The biomedicalism thesis, which claims that expansion of drug treatment reflects advances in biomedical science to meet health needs, is found to be a weak explanatory factor because a significant amount of growth in pharmaceuticalization is inconsistent with scientific evidence, and because drug innovations offering significant therapeutic advance have been declining across the sector, including areas of major health need. Some elements of consumerism have undermined pharmaceuticalization, even causing de-pharmaceuticalization in some therapeutic sub-fields. However, other aspects of consumerism, together with industry promotion, medicalization, and deregulatory state policies are found to be drivers of increased pharmaceuticalization in ways that are largely outside, or sub-optimal for, significant therapeutic advances in the interests of public health.

A stated preference experiment was performed in Edmonton in Canada to both examine the nature of various influences on bicycle use and obtain ratios among parameter values to be used in the development of a larger simulation of household travel behaviour. A total of 1128 questionnaires were completed and returned by current cyclists. Each questionnaire presented a pair of possible bicycle use alternatives and asked which was preferred for travel to a hypothetical all-day meeting or gathering (business or social). Alternatives were described by specifying the amounts of time spent on three different types of cycling facility and whether or not showers and/or secure bicycle parking were available at the destination. Indications of socio-economic character and levels of experience and comfort regarding cycling were also collected. The observations thus obtained were used to estimate the parameter values for a range of different utility functions in logit models representing this choice behaviour. The results indicate, among other things, that time spent cycling in mixed traffic is more onerous than time spent cycling on bike lanes or bike paths; that secure parking is more important than showers at the destination; and that cycling times on roadways tend to become less onerous as level of experience increases. Some of these results are novel and others are consistent with findings regarding bicycle use in work done by others, which is seen to add credence to this work. A review of previous findings concerning influences on cycling behaviour is also included. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007Cycling, Bicycle route choice, Stated preference, Logit choice modelling,

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Coinciding with sixty years of the U.K. National Health Service (NHS), this article reviews the neglected area of the governance of the pharmaceutical industry and the NHS. It traces the relationships between the pharmaceutical industry, the state, and the NHS from the creation of the health service to the present, as they have grappled with the overlapping challenges of pharmaceutical safety, efficacy, cost-effectiveness, pricing, promotion, and advertising. The article draws on the concepts of "corporate bias" and "regulatory capture" from political theory, and "counter-vailing powers" and "clinical autonomy" in medical sociology, while also introducing the new concepts of "assimilated allies" and "pharmaceuticalization" in order to synthesize a theoretical framework capable of longitudinal empirical analysis of pharmaceutical governance. The analysis identifies areas in which the governance of pharmaceuticals and the NHS has contributed to progress in health care since 1948. However, it is argued that that progress has been slow, restricted, and vulnerable to misdirection due to the enormous and unrivaled influence afforded to the pharmaceutical industry in policy developments. Countervailing influences against such corporate bias have often been limited and subject to destabilization by the industry's assimilated allies either within the state or in the embrace of pharmaceuticalization and consumerism.