How the Drug Companies Want Us to Be Sick

Drug corporations and their "awareness" groups, as we're all painfully aware, have defined and redefined a host of medical conditions -- including female sexual dysfunction, erectile dysfunction, restless legs, sleeplessness, bipolar disorder, attention deficit disorder, social anxiety disorder and irritable bowel syndrome -- to include larger and larger segments of the population in the United States and other Western nations.

Accepting for a moment the industry's claims about the numbers of people suffering from the eight diseases listed above, we could do some simple calculations showing that up to 93 percent of adult women and men in the United States suffer from at least one of them. Throw in a few more conditions like depression, bone density loss and premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and industry figures make it appear that virtually every American has a disease in need of a treatment.

Last year, Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels called attention to the epidemic of disease marketing in their book "Selling Sickness." Last month, health professionals, academics, journalists and consumers gathered in Newcastle, Australia, for the Inaugural Conference on Disease Mongering. A set of papers from that meeting was published free by the online journal PLoS Medicine. Also last month, the Prescription Access Litigation Project (PALP) in Boston announced its "2006 Bitter Pill Awards," recognizing drug companies that engaged in the year's worst "overzealous and questionable marketing practices."

tags: drugs  healthcare  propaganda  marketing