Sponsored by the Office for History of Science and Technology (UC Berkeley)
And the History of Health Sciences Program (UCSF)
Andrea Tone
McGill University
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Psychopharmacology in the Age of Anxiety: A History of America's Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers
In the last 50 years, we have increasingly turned to a pharmaceutical solution for the problem of everyday nerves. Today, drugs for anxiety are a billion-dollar business in the United States. Yet as recently as 1955, when Miltown, the first prescription minor tranquilizer, became available, pharmaceutical executives worried that there wouldn't be a market for anxiety-relief. Instead, Miltown became a commercial sensation, the first prescription psychotropic blockbuster in United States history. In a way unimaginable in today's political environment, where the latest pharmaceutical breakthrough is often regarded with suspicion, people in the 1950s viewed tranquilizers with curiosity, excitement, and wonder. Drawing on a range of original sources, including FDA records, manufacturers' files, government investigations, oral histories, and popular culture, I explore the rise of America's tranquilizer culture. From the duck-and-cover drills and scientific optimism of the Cold War to the "just say no" pharmaceutical puritanism of the late 1970s and 1980s, I ground the history of the drug's development, popularity, and later discrediting within the political, economic, and cultural contexts in which America's contested but enduring relationship with tranquilizers took shape.
PLEASE NOTE DIFFERENT TIME AND LOCATION.
12:00PM
Monday, February 4, 2008
S-180, Medical Sciences Building
UCSF Parnassus Campus
Office for History of Science and Technology, 543 Stephens Hall #2350
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2350
tel: (510) 642-4581, e-mail: ohst@berkeley.edu
