The Market in Mind: How Financialization Is Shaping Neuroscience, Translational Medicine, and Innovation in Biotechnology

by Mark Dennis Robinson

A critical examination of translational medicine, when private risk is transferred to the public sector and university research teams become tech startups for global investors.

A global shift has secretly transformed science and medicine. Starting in 2003, biomedical research in the West has been reshaped by the emergence of translational science and medicine--the idea that the aim of research is to translate findings as quickly as possible into medical products. In The Market in Mind, Mark Dennis Robinson charts this shift, arguing that the new research paradigm has turned university research teams into small biotechnology startups and their industry partners into early-stage investment firms. There is also a larger, surprising consequence from this shift: according to Robinson, translational science and medicine enable biopharmaceutical firms, as part of a broader financial strategy, to outsource the riskiest parts of research to nonprofit universities. Robinson examines the implications of this new configuration. What happens, for example, when universities absorb unknown levels of risk? Robinson argues that in the years since the global financial crisis translational science and medicine has brought about "the financialization of health."

Robinson explores such topics as shareholder anxiety and industry retreat from Alzheimer's and depression research; how laboratory research is understood as health innovation even when there is no product; the emergence of investor networking events as crucial for viewing science in a market context; and the place of patients in research decisions. Although translational medicine justifies itself by the goal of relieving patients' suffering, Robinson finds patients' voices largely marginalized in translational neuroscience.

324 pages, Paperback

Published July 23, 2019

Reviews

[Nenen Positos]

You’ll be hard pressed to find a more well-researched and rigorous book on this topic. Just thumbing through this text, one can see that it was backbreaking work. From internal management consulting documents to engagements with french theory, this book required a lot of heavy lifting. I disagreed with some part of this book. For example, the author makes it seem like pharma executives have given up on neuro, and I’m not sure about that. The author of this book is very careful with language, so he probably does not overstate that, but there's been a small reentry back into neuroscience by Big Pharma. But the general dynamics that he uncovers is absolutely correct and its something that I can attest to since I've been closely involved with pharmaceutical companies. The author has much of it right. I couldn't quite follow the academic arguments though, but I could tell that these details and arguments were well researched and hit the bulls eyes.

[Roger Knight]

At first, I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to read another book about money and drugs and medicine. But this book, though a difficult read, was illuminating for how it went far beyond classic concerns that one finds in books on these subjects. Where this book differs is that it takes us into the fast changing world of Silicon Valley investors, the moral worlds of patients in Ohio, scenes of laboratory life in a neuroscience laboratory, and takes these scenes and connects this data and offers a powerful analysis. Showing the way that finance-driven decision-making weaves its way from corporate boardrooms into the experiments of elite scientists and the way that those experiments spell massive implications for society - means that this book is a much a muscular example of deep thinking, but it's also an ethical project about the stakes of new modes of research in the sciences.

[Michael Mariner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published by MIT, this book is a scholarly (or technical) book and is not written for the general public per se. But for fellows scholars of this subject, the book wows. Lots of work went into this. The topic is also very, very important. The funding of the medical industry is something that affects so many people, involved in the scientific community or not. For people interested in the background that's led to so many stories in the news, this is a great read. The Market in Mind narrows in on developments currently changing medical research and application. It shines a light on issues under the current fictionalization of medical research. A fascinating read to both those in the field and those who are just interested in learning more.

—Michael Kevin Mariner Jr.

[Al · Rating 5 out of 5]

How is it that the last century saw a rapid rise of interest in translation? What exactly is translational science and medicine? It is perhaps the biggest change in biology research at universities around the world, and yet few know that the transformation had even occurred and that its consequences are so important. Tracing developments in neuroscience, the animations of global capitalism, the challenges at work in new biotechnologies, the way that clinical decision-making often occurs without enough information -- the book is a tour de force. The book is also full of surprises. The investor conferences that Robinson details were a total surprise to me. For academics or graduate students interested in the dynamics of of scientific research and finance, this is a must read.

[Lael Lopez · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I appreciated about this book is how it explained the relationship between clinicians -- neurologists and psychologists -- come to use new medicines and medical approaches that come from scientific developments. We think that science research just somehow magically turns into medicines. But there are people and decisions involved in every step. In one part of the book, Robinson shows how a neurologist has to take on the work of “translating” a new test into answers that help patients, despite the fact that the test simply provided information. Much of translation relies on factors that don’t appear scientific, which is what the author shows in his extremely well-researched book.

[Usha Pandey]

Tracing the changes that the flow money has made to the global medical system is a challenging endeavor that’s embraced with enthusiasm. Examples of mental health and Alzheimer's research really hit home how immediately the impacts of financial incentives dictating the course of university research can be felt. Though I couldn’t always follow the technical minutiae, I found myself fascinated by the book’s deep dive into the translation of research to marketable product and how profit motives end up working their way upstream to the labs and researchers and their choices of topics.