John has been directing a research programme on international comparisons of drug safety for decades – much of it funded by various independent bodies, mostly the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). He is the first social scientist to undertake such work. The ESRC independent evaluation process found his work in this area to be outstanding. The main thrust of his work in this area has had several strands. First to develop robust methodologies for evaluating how well government drug regulatory agencies protect the public from unsafe drugs. Second to examine why some regulatory agencies are, or have been, better at protecting public safety than others. And thirdly, to provide social scientific explanations (sociological/political/economic) for why regulatory agencies improve and do better, or conversely deteriorate, over time in relation to drug safety regulation. This theme is exemplified in the following publications:
John Abraham and Courtney Davis (2020) ‘International and Temporal Comparative Analysis of UK and US Drug Safety Regulation in Changing Political Contexts’ Social Science & Medicine 25 (June): 113005-15.
John Abraham and Courtney Davis (2005) ‘A comparative analysis of drug safety withdrawals in the UK and US: implications for current regulatory thinking and policy’ Social Science & Medicine 61: 881-92.
John Abraham Science, Politics and the Pharmaceutical Industry, 310pp, UCL Press, 1995.
John Abraham and Julie Sheppard The Therapeutic Nightmare: The Battle Over the World’s most Controversial Sleeping Pill, 192pp, Earthscan, 1999.
John Abraham and Courtney Davis (2010) ‘Discovery and management of adverse drug reactions: the nomifensine hypersensitivity syndrome, 1977-1986’ Social History of Medicine: Official Journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, 23 (1): 153-73.
John Abraham and Courtney Davis (2009) ‘Drug evaluation and the permissive principle: continuities and contradictions between standards and practices in antidepressant regulation’ Social Studies of Science 39: 569-98.
John Abraham and Courtney Davis (2007) ‘Deficits, expectations and paradigms in British and American drug safety assessments: Prising open the black box of regulatory science’ Science, Technology & Human Values: 32 (4): 399-431.
John Abraham and Courtney Davis (2006) ‘Testing times: the emergence of the Practolol disaster and its challenge to British drug regulation in the modern period’ Social History of Medicine 19: 127-47.
John Abraham (2003) ‘Learning from Drug Disasters and Reforming Medicines Regulation’ Critical Public Health 13: 269-80.
John Abraham (1994) ‘Distributing the Benefit of the Doubt: Scientists, Regulators and Drug Safety’ Science, Technology and Human Values 19: 493-522.
John Abraham and John Sheppard (1998) ‘International Comparative Analysis and Explanation in Medical Sociology: Demystifying the Halcion Anomaly’. Sociology 32: 141-62.
John Abraham and Courtney Davis (2011) ‘A comparative analysis of risk management strategies in EU and US pharmaceutical regulation’ Health, Risk & Society, 13: 413-31.
John Abraham and Julie Sheppard (1999) ‘Complacent and conflicting scientific expertise in British and American drug regulation: clinical risk assessment of triazolam’ Social Studies of Science 29: 803-43.