Generic : the unbranding of modern medicine / Jeremy A. Greene.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The same but not the same -- What's in a name? Ordering the world of cures ; The generic as critique of the brand -- No such thing as a generic drug? Drugs anonymous ; Origins of a self-effacing industry ; Generic specificity -- The sciences of similarity. Contests of equivalence ; The significance of differences -- Laws of substitution. Substitution as vice and virtue ; Universal exchange -- Paradoxes of generic consumption. Liberating the captive consumer ; Generic consumption in the clinic, pharmacy, and supermarket The generic alternative. Science and politics of the "me-too" drug ; Preferred drugs, public and private ; The global generic -- The crisis of similarity.