*NEWS*DRUG FIRMS…..INVENTING DISEASES

[Anonymous]

Drug firms ‘inventing diseases’
Pharmaceutical firms are inventing diseases to sell more drugs, researchers have warned.
Disease-mongering
promotes non-existent diseases and exaggerates mild problems to boost
profits, the Public Library of Science Medicine reported.
Researchers
at Newcastle University in Australia said firms were putting healthy
people at risk by medicalising conditions such as menopause.
But the pharmaceutical industry denied it invented diseases.    
DISEASE-MONGERING
Restless legs – Prevalence of rare condition exaggerated
Irritable bowel syndrome – Promoted as a serious illness needing therapy, when usually a mild problem
Menopause – Too often medicalised as a disorder when really a normal part of life
Report
authors David Henry and Ray Moynihan criticised attempts to convince
the public in the US that 43% of women live with sexual dysfunction.
They
also said that risk factors like high cholesterol and osteoporosis were
being presented as diseases – and rare conditions such as restless leg
condition and mild problems of irritable bowel syndrome were
exaggerated.
The report said: “Disease-mongering is the selling of
sickness that widens the boundaries of illness and grows the markets
for those who sell and deliver treatments.
Campaigns
“It is
exemplified mostly explicitly by many pharmaceutical industry-funded
disease awareness campaigns – more often designed to sell drugs than to
illuminate or to inform or educate about the prevention of illness or
the maintenance of health.”
The researchers called on doctors,
patients and support groups to be aware of the marketing tactics of the
pharmaceutical industry and for more research into the way in which
conditions are presented.
They added: “The motives of health
professionals and health advocacy groups may well be the welfare of
patients, rather than any direct self-interested financial benefit, but
we believe that too often marketers are able to crudely manipulate
those motivations.
“Disentangling the different motivations of the
different actors in disease-mongering will be a key step towards a
better understanding of this phenomenon.”
But Richard Ley, of the
Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said the research
was centred on the US where the drugs industry had much more freedom to
promote their products to the public.
“The way you can advertise is much more restricted in the UK so it is wrong to extrapolate it.
“Also,
it is not right to say the industry invents diseases, we don’t. It is
up to doctors to decide what treatment to give people, we can’t tell
them.

[Author]

April 13, 2006 at 10:05 AM