Abstract

The current regulatory regime for pharmaceuticals is criticized from a libertarian perspective for imposing the same risk–benefit analysis on all patients. The critics call for the abandonment of market access regulations. But the regulatory regime is also criticized by philosophers of science for applying too low epistemic standards, who call for stricter regulation. This article aims to engage the debate in a less polarized way, first by advancing the libertarian alternative to the current regime through an approach I call Certified Capitalism for Pharmaceuticals (CCP), without endorsing this view in the end; second, by developing an argument against all regulatory regimes without market access regulations, including CCP, based on the possibility that the pharmaceutical industry could bend pharmaceutical science to its interests in such a regime. Whether this argument is successful, or whether CCP is able to circumvent it, cannot be decided on the basis of the empirical information currently available. Third, these arguments lead to two further insights for a philosophy of science that takes the social embeddedness of science seriously: Market access regulations limit the bending of research by industry by limiting epistemic diversity. The patent system can be seen as the thread of a well-functioning scientific system because it can give some agents enough resources to bend science through industrial selection.