http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0„1751362,00.html
[b]Drug firms accused of turning healthy people into patients
Companies exaggerating ailments, reports claim[/b]
The studies, published in a respected medical journal, accuse the pharmaceutical industry of “disease mongering” - a practice in which the market for a drug is inflated by convincing people they are sick and in need of medical treatment.
The “corporate-sponsored creation of disease” wastes resources and may even harm people because of the medication they turn to, the researchers add.
In 11 papers in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine, experts from Britain, the US and elsewhere argue that new diseases are being defined by specialists who are often funded by the drug industry.
According to the researchers, the campaigns boost drug sales by medicalising aspects of normal life such as sexuality, portray mild problems such as irritability in children as serious illnesses and suggest that rare health conditions, such as the urge to move ones’ legs, are common.
“Disease mongering exploits the deepest atavistic fears of suffering and death,” said Iona Heath, a general practitioner at the Caversham Practice in London who contributed to the journal. She added: “It is in the interests of pharmaceutical companies to extend the range of the abnormal so that the market for treatments is proportionately enlarged.”
In the journal’s editorial, guest editors Ray Moynihan and David Henry write: “Informal alliances of pharmaceutical corporations, public relations firms, doctors’ groups and patient advocates promote these ideas to the public and policy makers, often using mass media to push a certain view of a particular health problem.”…
…According to Leonore Tiefer, clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University, a textbook case of disease mongering is the creation and promotion of “female sexual dysfunction”. The campaign by a number of drug companies has been especially successful in the US, he notes, where there has been a heavily contested attempt to convince the public that 43% of women live with the condition…
…[b]Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)[/b]
Prescriptions for ADHD drugs escalated during the 1990s following the organised penetration of the education system by the pharmaceutical industry. Teachers may be most likely to report signs of behavioural disorders.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0„1751362,00.html