Healthy ageing and preventive medication: On the mutual shaping of science, market and welfare state regulation

Abstract

Preventive medication taken to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease has become part of the everyday life for many elderly people in Denmark. Focusing on developments around blood pressure lowering pharmaceuticals from the 1950s and onwards, this article explores scientific, economic and political changes that have contributed to establish preventive medication as a taken-for-granted part of our aging. The analysis draws upon medical historical and social science publications, publicly available reports and statistics, and interviews with hypertension researchers and pharmaceutical company managers in Denmark. The analysis demonstrates how changes in the conception of elevated blood pressure among medical researchers interacted with changes in the pharmaceutical market that was made possible through welfare state regulation emerging after World War II. Hence, the increased use of preventive cardiovascular medication cannot be understood simply as a triumph of science or a medicalization process driven by economic interests. Rather, it is necessary to understand which conditions of possibility that are created in the interplay between market developments, research ambitions and public regulation, and how these possibilities are
used by various actors in a field.