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Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2005 6:25 pm Post Subject: Selling Sickness
In the Listener issue dated July 30th their new issue dated July 30th there is an article by staff writer Noel O’Hare reviewing a new book by two health researchers who are claiming that drug companies are finding new “illnesses” to ensure a growing market for their products.
Due to the increasing medicalisation of daily life it creates a market-driven approach to health. When ill health is seen as a business opportunity, there is no percentage in preventing it, except with drugs and expensive technologies.. So market logic dictates that new diseases need to be created and existing ones redefined to expand the market for their treatment.
The book is called “Selling Sickness – How Drug Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients” written by two Medical Journalists, one an Australian, the other Canadian.
“The definition of what’s normal gets smaller and smaller and the definition of what’s abnormal just seems to grow.. And that happens condition by condition”, says one of the authors who was in New Zealand recently to address the Royal College of General Practitioners’ Conference.
In chapters ranging from cholesterol to female sexual dysfunction, “Selling Sickness” catalogues how medical conditions have been deliberately expanded. In the case of cholesterol, official US cholesterol guidelines were rewritten several times to increase the number of people recommended for drug treatment from 13m in the 90s to 40m in 2004. The public weren’t told, though, that many of the experts who drew up the guidelines had multiple ties to drug companies.
Hypertension, (abnormal high blood pressure), also a big earner for drug companies, is another condition where the goalposts have been moved. The guidelines here have introduced a new category called “prehypertension”, which of course requires new preventative drugs.
One of the most disturbing attempts to reclassify healthy people as ill, was the redefinition of Osteoporosis (brittle bones). Affecting mainly post menopausal women, any woman who did not have the bone density of a 30 year old was labelled “abnormal”. As a result of drug company fear-mongering, the global market for osteoporosis drugs exceeds $5b, though the benefits from taking the drugs are small.
The market for antidepressants has been expanded as a result of blurring the boundaries between ordinary life and mental illness. The marketing campaigns masquerading as health education or awareness-raising have, the authors say, one purpose: to “profoundly reshape our views of what constitutes treatable illness, and at the same time channel people towards the latest pill.”
So pervasive is drug company influence that it’s almost impossible to tell what is medicine and what is marketing. The authors say”The extent of the Pharmaceutical industry’s influence over the health system is huge. The doctors, drug reps, medical education, ads, patient groups, guidelines, celebrities, conferences, public awareness campaigns, thought-leaders – at every level drug company money is lubricating what many believe is an unhealthy flow of influence.”
The cost has been enormous both in creating public anxiety about health , and in public-health spending.. Research shows GP’s are heavily influenced by drug company sales reps and promotional literature. Said GP’s exposed to drug reps are more likely to favour drugs over non-drug therapy and to prescribe expensive drugs when equally effective, but cheaper drugs are available.
There are some hopeful signs that the medical profession has started to acknowledge that its relationship with the Pharmaceutical industry is corrupting and steps need to be taken to disentangle itself.
“The Pharmaceutical industry has perverted the whole notion of prevention. Prevention is no longer about stopping smoking, exercising and so on, it’s about long-term drug use. The trouble is, you end up with large numbers of people on multiple drugs for the rest of their lives.”
I have quoted extensively from the Noel O’Hare article as I believe it highlights the main thrust of this world-wide dominance. I see it as an unscrupulous, unprincipled and unethical practice where greed is paramount and shows indifference and callous disregard for the welfare of fellow human beings. I hope this book reaches a wide section of the population, and that the authors are not targeted as a result, They are, after all taking on the might of the all powerful drug companies and in so doing have become whistle blowers.
Bev.
Good people need to speak up on what they know is wrong. The world as we know it is at a crossroads and now is not the time for silence for fear of reprisal.
Currently drug companies are waging a war on vitamin supplement companies and natural health care practices worldwide through the World health organisation to bring in more drug based medicine. You can read about that here.....
That article is an accurate summation of the significant trend and direction that the health sector is taking, encouraged by saturation advertising, both on tv and in the press and magazines.
It does appear that new diseases are being created which were unheard of previously and there is an increasing pressure to take pills as a remedy for all types of ailments, imaginery or otherwise.
This is a creeping infiltration on society's consciouness, insidiously aimed at altering people's perception of themselves and their world. :twisted:
and is indeed directing attention away from our natural wellness and how to maintain and foster that state which needs no unnatural chemical additives to "make it better."
For a lighter take on this read Willy Trolove's article in Monday's Herald.
Deano, that article from energygrid in Australia is quite disturbing. I have heard from some sources here that there have been similar moves to stop the sale of certain vitamins and supplements, but nothing largescale as yet :!:
Joined: 05 Nov 2003
Posts: 814
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2005 7:54 pm Post Subject:
Welcome aboard Bev :-)
You raise extremely significant concerns about the increasing normalisation of drug use in society. The blurring and narrowing of the boundaries between what is considered normal and what is considered to be illness seems to be a very gradual, subtle and insidious process and indeed we are really beginning to see the effects of it here in New Zealand.
Many of us been have been shocked by the emergence of direct marketing of drugs to the consumer through television advertising and how more and more patients are demanding these treatments from their health practitioners as a result of ad campaigns. I have been observing for a long time, how 'conditions' like depression have come to describe much of what we all experience from time to time as a normal part of getting through life. It's possible that drugs like Viagra have been allowed to gain a foothold of dependency all too early in many cases, dooming many people to a reliance on the drug that may not necessarily have been required in the long term.
I think the spectre of preventative drug therapy looms ever larger and sets a very dangerous precedent. You may not have heard of George W Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, an initiative to introduce compulsory psychiatric screening for all US school children. The plan proposes to medicate children who meet their criteria for enforced preventative treatment.
Quote:
President Bush's little-publicized New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has proposed comprehensive mental-illness screening for all Americans. If this proposal is carried out, no adult or child will be safe from intrusive probing by "experts," backed by drug companies, who believe mental illness is woefully underdiagnosed and many millions of people should be taking powerful and expensive psychiatric drugs.
No doubt the issues Deano raises about the availability of vitamins etc is one few people in New Zealand would be aware of. This is occurring in Europe too. When this happens in Australia, usually New Zealand won't be far behind as the article suggests:
Quote:
Trans-Tasman harmonizing means to force the Australian "regulatory standards" onto New Zealand 's supplement industry
Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 11:09 pm Post Subject: Re Selling Sickness
Hi
This is a belated thank you in response to those who welcomed me to the Forum last week and I do want to be able to contribute further items of interest in the future as I come across them. Bev.
Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Posts: 43
Location: Levin, New Zealand
Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 12:59 pm Post Subject: Medicalisation
Hello Bev, and welcome!
Hi to everyone else - no, I've not disappeared totally, but I have found myself so flat-out, I've hardly had time for personal emails - let alone anything else on the computer sorry!
Right! medicalisation - a topic dear to my heart.
The comment about Osteoporosis is a very good example of what has happened in this area of medicine.
I was one who was told I SERIOUSLY NEEDED to have a bone density scan - so I did!
Well I was shown a colourful 'map' of my bone density ,`and given a very 'scary' sounding prognosis. I was given a prescription for some large efferfescent tablets which I was to be sure to take (lest something dreadful happen to my fast deteriorating skeletal system).
Well, the tablets caused quite severe constipation! Fear not, there was an antidote for that in the form of some tablets I could take every second day - and . . .
Well, I decided to cease ingesting the efferfescent tablets, and took a more natural approach. I reduced the amount of coffee I drank, added milk to my coffee, increased the milk on cornflakes, and told myself to forget the colourful 'map'!
A couple of years later I mentioned to the doctor that I had no wish to pursue bone-density scanning, or tablets.
The doctor's response was "Oh don't worry about your bones; if you worry, that will cause more problems - and they're now thinking common sense will do more to assist bones than scans and pills!"
I wasn't worrying - but it just prove that these things are really just medical 'fads' - often to suit the needs of a research programme taking place at some particular time. Bones one year, blood the next.
Moderation in all things is really the best line to take.
After all - what chance do bones or any other tissue have to remain 'healthy' when we have all the foreign mystery particles and chemicals floating around in the air we breath????
Just my thoughts - Pamela
Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2005 5:58 pm Post Subject: Medicalisation
Hi Pamela
Your experience with the G.P. sounds all too familiar, especially bringing in the fear factor that makes people comply. It takes courage to fly in the face of medical science and make decisions for your own health and well being. Then to have the mental toughness to persist, stick with it and carry it on through.
In the latest Time Magazine there is another article from an angry insider saying drug giants are putting profit ahead of public health - and seducing doctors into helping them. She has written a book called "The Truth About The Drug Companies" and it is soon to be released here. Should make interesting reading from another whistle blower.
Bev
