Medical propaganda agents, knowledge, and colonial power: Hierarchies of production and reproduction in the pharmaceutical industry Agentes de propaganda médica, saberes y poder colonial: Jerarquías de producción y reproducción en la industria farmacéutica

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the meanings that Medical Sales Representatives (APM) attribute to laboratories, drugs, and the medicines each of them produces, within a framework where symbolic, epistemic, and material hierarchies are intertwined. Drawing on a decolonial approach, I examine how the pharmaceutical industry in Argentina is organized around different types of laboratories—those that conduct research and those that replicate—and, consequently, the distinction between original and generic medicines, revealing asymmetries in the legitimacy of biomedical knowledge production. I also explore the role of “speakers” as authorized mediators who transmit to physicians the knowledge about new drugs produced in Europe, knowledge that is internalized as scientific truth but is deeply shaped by the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. I argue that APM not only reproduce but also embody the medical knowledge legitimized by the industry, thereby rendering other possible forms of knowledge invisible and marginal. This analytical perspective demonstrates how the global capitalist colonial matrix of power continues to operate persistently in the production and circulation of medicines, reinforcing inequalities within the Argentine pharmaceutical field.