Conflict of interest and anti-Alzheimer's treatments: From the construction to the challenging of a medical promise

The purpose of this article is to analyze the trajectory of anti-Alzheimer's (AA) medicines by focusing on the issue of conflict of interest. It first studies the formation of a political economy of promise around AA medicines, in which pharmaceutical firms' strategies played a pivotal role. It then shows how the growing problematization of conflict of interest in medicine from the 2000s worked to destabilize this promise, its effects on the credibility of knowledge, on medical hierarchies, and the mobilization of conflict of interest as a repertoire of action. This research is based on documentary work and interviews with key French actors in this history.