Constructions of Trust, Credibility and Authority: Trade Associations, Advertising Standards and the Regulation of ‘Non-Ethical’ Medicines and Treatments, 1902 – 1971

Between 1919 and the late 1960s, prominent manufacturers of proprietary articles represented by the Proprietary Association of Great Britain (PAGB) developed a code of advertising standards in relation to proprietary medicines and allied articles. The commitment to minimum standards of conduct was intended by associated manufacturers to generate a level of trust and credibility in their industry capable of protecting it from the possibility of unprecedented government intervention. Such an intervention was premised on a perception amongst some government ministers, medical professionals and social justice advocates that ‘patent’, ‘secret’ and ‘proprietary’ medicines constituted a network of fraud and deliberate crime against the wellbeing of the public. The code of advertising standards satisfied the PAGB’s objective by providing an instrument with which to variously block, delay and reshape external constraints in ways congruent with members’ commercial interests. Importantly, it provided the association with a means to negotiate with a multitude of interest groups – trade associations, professional societies, media groups and government departments – who, similarly, were involved in the regulation of medicine advertising. The development and enforcement of advertising standards as related to medicines was a site of intense negotiation, as interest groups pressed claims against one another with a view to satisfy their own distinct objectives. However, despite instances of discord and dispute, the thesis argues that there was a significant degree of mutual interchange and cooperation between these groups in the formulation of a system of regulation. In bringing such interactions to the fore, the thesis is able to provide an account of the long-term public-private partnerships that sustained and authorised a marketplace for ‘non-ethical’ medicines in Britain from 1902, when the anonymous Manufacturers Association was established, to 1971, when the provisions of the Medicines Act (1968) became operational.