Adverse Events

Jill Fisher has provided the most thorough examination [of Phase I trials] yet … the world that Fisher reveals in Adverse Events is unsettling. ~New York Review of Books

Adverse Events damns the industry with simple description, but Fisher’s analysis has a bigger concern. The industry is a symptom of the American problem of racist capitalism, and in the book, Fisher documents how a racist, wildly unequal economy leads people who are already in precarious positions to take part in first-in-human trials. Ten years ago, when she started her research, she could hardly have predicted its immediacy. ~The New Republic

This book presents weighty implications relative to current US economic and employment arrangements ... a helpful reference in courses on bioethics, biomedical research methods, social justice, gender and race/ethnicity, intersectionality studies, and the sociology of science. ~CHOICE

Adverse Events reveals the many and varied ways in which social inequalities—particularly class and race—compel individuals to become healthy volunteers for Phase I trials, despite the risks involved ... This is a text that can—and should—reach audiences beyond academia. ~Medical Anthropology Quarterly

May become a scholarly classic, change how the drugs we take are tested, and save billions in misleading trials that are not necessary. ~Donald W. Light, Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine

One of the best books of medical sociology I have ever read. Fisher describes the world of paid research subjects with remarkable insight and compassion. . . . Nothing short of brilliant. ~Carl Elliott, author of White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine

A mesmerizing ethnographic study that shows the safety of the pharmaceuticals we swallow depends on an invisible army of volunteers putting their bodies at risk for a quick dollar. ~Stefan Timmermans, University of California, Los Angeles

Offers an unflinching view of the inequities built in to the twenty-first-century clinical-trials industry. . . . Has as much to say about the micropolitics of stigma and adversity as it does about the macrostructures of health and capitalism today. ~Jeremy Greene, author of Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine

Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, its message is very important. ~For Better Science

Jill Fisher invites the reader into a sustained and systematic analysis of how pharmaceutical companies operate their Phase I drug trials and the symbiotic relationship between drug development and what she calls a “profound economic insecurity” on the part of the participants ... It is an important book for understanding broader sociological concepts of inequality, stigma, and pharmaceutical development. ~Social Forces

Leaves a striking impression on the reader ... Likely to be of interest to a broad audience. It is suitable for lay people who have an interest in exploring a largely unseen side of the pharmaceutical industry, people working in pharmaceuticals who wish to scrutinize the ins-and-outs of their industry, as well as students and academics such as bioethicists, sociologists, and those studying race and ethnicity ~New Genetics and Society