Medicine is complicated, drug regulation necessary, and transnational studies useful in challenges assumptions. This is a solid and well-selected examination of differences in regulatory styles between the US and Germany, but the theoretical constructs are not entirely powerful enough to organize the subject area. Daemmrich uses theoretical cultures, the relations of doctors, pharmaceutical companies, regulatory bodies, and patients, to describe how drugs are regulated in the US (generally: transparent, statistical, 'objective' population risk) and Germany (insular, qualitative, expert medical judgment) through case studies on a variety of drugs. Culture isn't a bad construct per se, but in this case, culture seems too vague to describe the activities of pharmacology.

Actor-Network Theory is used to describe science, but not in a particularly sophisticated way. More should be done on the politics of what Jasanoff calls 'regulatory science' in a pharmacological context. The difference between local and 'translatable' facts is not fully explored, nor the effort required to turn the general practitioner's office or hospital into a clinic, an extension of a scientific rather than therapeutic endeavor.