Breast cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers and a
leading cause of death for women worldwide. With advances in molecular
engineering in the 1980s, hopes began to rise that a non-toxic and
non-invasive treatment for breast cancer could be developed. These hopes
were stoked by the researchers, biotech companies, and analysts who
worked to make sense of the uncertainties during product development. In
Making Sense Sophie Mützel traces this emergence of "innovative breast
cancer therapeutics" from the late 1980s up to 2010, through the lens of
the narratives of the involved actors. Combining theories of economic
and cultural sociology, Mützel shows how stories are integral for the
emergence of new markets; stories of the future create a market of
expectations prior to any existing products; stories also help to create
categories on what such a new market and its products are about. Making
Sense uses thousands of press statements, media reports, scientific
reports, and financial and industry analyses, and combines qualitative
and large-scale computational text analyses, to illustrate these
mechanisms, presenting a fresh view of how life-prolonging innovations
can be turned into market products.