The rise of statins in Denmark

Former PhD student Sofie Rosenlund Lau and former associate professor Bjarke Oxlund have published a research article in the journal BioSocieties jointly with two colleagues from the interdisciplinary research project, LIFESTAT, which ran from 2013-2017.

The article provides a socio-historical account of the rise of preventive medicine in Denmark by exploring details of how pharmaceutical cholesterol-reduction became routinized as a standard of care. Based on the close scrutiny of three decades of discussions in the Danish Medical Journal and interviews with key experts, the article points to the important role of general practitioners as the main executors of preventive medicine in practice. Furthered by the introduction of new techno-scientific innovations such as guidelines and assessment tools, the routinization of statins in Denmark happened as a bottom-up process championed by a local group of therapeutic reformers who successfully maneuvered the realms of science, politics, and practice in order to transform contested global evidence into the very foundation of a new standard of care.

Bjarke Oxlund & Sofie Rosenlund Lau, The rise of statins in Denmark: Making the case for a localized approach to the routinization of pharmaceutical prevention of cardiovascular disease, BioSocieties, June 2018.