- 15 April 2006
- Magazine issue 2547
Corporate-sponsored disease is a triumph of marketing over science - it is a juggernaut that needs to be fought
EVIDENCE-based medicine has started to make a real impact in the past decade. Yet as we move towards more rational treatment in some areas, in others there is a trend in the opposite direction. Every year diseases new to science emerge - complete with the drugs to treat them. These are products of disease mongering.
It has long been a tactic of pharmaceutical companies to try to increase the number of people who can be prescribed their drugs. They argue for symptoms that are a little out of the ordinary, such as elevated blood pressure, to be redefined as diseases. They lobby for problems previously seen as social or cultural to be redefined as disorders that would benefit from drug therapy.
Thus our medicine cabinets are filling with the likes of antidepressants to treat "social anxiety" (shyness) and "premenstrual dysphoric dysfunction", appetite suppressants, and stimulants to improve the educational performance ...
