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Selling Sickness
I haven't been very good about finishing books lately, but did manage to read this one the whole way through: Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All into Patients by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels. The book is short, easy, and loaded with arresting anecdotes about drug company efforts to "brand" disease.
For instance, the criteria for what constitutes high blood pressure and high cholesterol have been defined downward in recent years, multiplying the number of people said to suffer from these problems. The pharma companies marketing new drug treatments essentially created the new criteria, but Moynihan and Cassels show that the drugs themselves have dubious value. In the case of high blood pressure meds, an extensive, long-term, federally funded study found that generic old diuretics were significantly better than new drugs--and a small fraction of the cost. But after the study was released, big pharma tried to bury the results. When one of the study's authors was scheduled to give a talk at a scientific conference in San Francisco, Pfizer even organized a sight-seeing trip for attending heart specialists to take place at the same time!
Each chapter focuses on a different ailment, including menopause, attention deficit disorder, social anxiety disorder, osteoporosis, irritable bowel syndrome, and female sexual dysfunction. The emphasis is not to deny that real people suffer from these problems, of course, but to point to the dangers of letting drug companies define illness. A good read, even if you're not paranoid about modern medicine.
Posted by carrie on 08/24/2005 | Permalink
Comments
Last year my doctor tested my blood cholesterol as part of an annual physical. It came back slightly high. What was I supposed to do about that?
"Eat less meat and eggs."
Doc, I'm a vegetarian - I eat NO meat nor eggs.
"Then you'll just have to take these cholesterol-lowering DRUGS!"
Needless to say, I refused, but the anxiety the whole episode induced probably raised my blood pressure permanently.
Posted by: Nina | Aug 24, 2005 2:53:09 PM
WHEATGRASS
Posted by: Dominic | Aug 24, 2005 6:51:05 PM
It's some scary stuff, but considering the amount of money involved, it's no wonder big pharma is so aggressive. Heck, my buddy works in pharma *packaging*, and even there the money is obscene.
Posted by: Eric Hart | Aug 26, 2005 12:38:18 AM
You can be a vegetarian and have cholesterol "issues". Do you eat trans fats (shortening, hydrogenated fats, margarine, etc.)?
Fats in their natural unprocessed state, from healthy vegetable or animal sources should be much safer generally than lab-produced fats, or fats from factory farm animals.
Posted by: Paul | Aug 30, 2005 2:35:51 PM
I'm not a doctor, but Moynihan and Cassels point out that high cholesterol isn't a problem in itself -- it's only a problem if you're at risk for heart disease. And even then it's only one of several factors contributing to disease.
The fact that we're so conscious of cholesterol "issues", they argue, is largely a consequence of drug marketing.
Posted by: carrie | Aug 30, 2005 2:49:16 PM
