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Updated: May 22, 2026

Drug Repurposing Hypothesis Generation Using the "RE:fine Drugs" System
Published on: December 11, 2016
Medicalization and pharmaceuticalization at the intersections: Looking backward, sideways and forward
1Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bowdoin College, 7000 College Station, Brunswick, ME 04011-8470, United States. sbell@bowdoin.edu
Abstract:
Medicalization studies have changed dramatically in the past decade in part due to the increased attention to the role of pharmaceuticals and the pharmaceutical industry in modern life. This review paper explores the relationship between the concepts of medicalization and the newly developed terms of pharmaceuticalization and the pharmaceuticalization of public health. We show how and why modernist thinking limits the terms' utility to explain a world in which both modern and postmodern objects and people interact with each other. We provide a framework for reconceptualizing and empirically studying these key processes of the 21st century.
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