You may think there is enough disease in the world already, and that no one would want to add to the diseases that we humans must deal with. But there is a powerful industry in our society that is working overtime to invent illnesses and to convince us we are suffering from them.
This effort is known as "disease mongering," a term introduced by health-science writer Lynn Payer in her 1992 book Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers Are Making You Feel Sick. Payer defined disease mongering as "trying to convince essentially well people that they are sick, or slightly sick people that they are very ill." This strategy has also been called "the corporate construction of disease" by Ray Moynihan, Iona Heath and David Henry in the British Medical Journal. "There's a lot of money to be made from telling healthy people they're sick," they say. "Pharmaceutical companies are actively involved in sponsoring the definition of diseases and promoting them to both prescribers and consumers."
Disease mongering got rolling in 1879 with the invention of Listerine, which was originally considered a surgical antiseptic. It was named for the famous English surgeon Joseph Lister, who performed the first antiseptic surgical procedure. Soon, however, Listerine's inventors, Dr. Joseph Lawrence and Jordan W. Lambert, were selling it in concentrated form as a floor cleaner and as a treatment for gonorrhea. In 1895 they began to market it to dentists for oral care, and in 1914 it became the first over-the-counter mouthwash marketed in the United States. By the 1920s, the Lambert Pharmacal Company, Listerine's maker, was confident they had found a cure; now all they needed was a disease. So they made one up: "halitosis." Before that time, halitosis was an obscure medical term that almost no one had heard of. Advertisers began to promote Listerine as a cure for this condition, which, they said, could blight anyone's chances of succeeding in romance, marriage and work. Soon, people all over America were suffering from halitosis.
The trick was to inflate a common, everyday condition to the level of pathology, which, if not attended to, could blight one's prospects for personal happiness and success. The ads the Listerine marketers crafted were mini-soap operas, in which people risked social shame and failure unless they used the product.
The Listerine marketers refined the marketing techniques that were pioneered by the patent-medicine makers of the 19th century. Novelist Henry James was so vexed by these hucksters he called them "nostrum-mongers." His brother, Harvard psychologist William James, who is considered the father of American psychology, was also exasperated by them, saying that "the authors of these advertisements should be treated as public enemies and have no mercy shown."
Payer identified several disease-mongering tactics. Among them:
• Taking a normal function and implying that there's something wrong with it and that it should be treated
• Describing suffering that isn't necessarily there
• Defining as large a proportion of the population as possible as suffering from the "disease"
• Defining a condition as a deficiency disease or as a disease of hormonal imbalance
• Recruiting doctors to spin the message
• Using statistics selectively to exaggerate the benefits of treatment
• Promoting the treatment as risk free
• Taking a common symptom that could mean anything and making it sound as if it is a sign of a serious disease
Healthcare watchdogs are now blowing the whistle on the major pharmaceutical companies who are engaged in this activity, and they have identified several "illnesses" as current examples of disease mongering. They are not saying these conditions don't exist -- they are indeed problematic for some people -- but that their incidence and relevance is wildly exaggerated in the pursuit of corporate profits. Among these "illnesses" are erectile dysfunction, female sexual dysfunction, bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), restless legs syndrome, osteoporosis, social shyness (also called social anxiety disorder and social phobia), irritable bowel syndrome and balding.
Why should we be concerned about disease mongering? There is a huge psychological burden in thinking of ourselves as diseased when we are not. Beyond the psychological cost, there are financial costs, both personal and social. Treating these "illnesses" with pharmaceuticals is not cheap. Moreover, no tax-funded healthcare system can sustain the cost of drug treatment for all the risks for which the drug companies would like to treat the population.
Reversing disease mongering won't be easy. There is a near-limitless amount of money to be made from marketing pharmaceutical remedies for diseases that exist mainly in the imagination, and there are powerful economic, political, and professional interests who desperately want this process to continue.
The way forward may be in immunizing ourselves psychologically against the messages from Big Pharma that invade our lives on every hand. We have to learn to stop being suckers.
How? Heath believes our fear of suffering and death make us susceptible to disease mongering. Today, because the comforts of religion are no longer real for many people, death seems more final, resulting in a panicky rush to use anything that offers better health and increased longevity. So it may be that the best way to resist disease mongering is not to beat our heads against the fortress of Big Pharma, but to develop the psychological and spiritual maturity that makes us resistant to their efforts to instill fear and dread in our lives.
It's been said that one of the main ways we humans differ from other creatures is in our desire to take a pill. The pharmaceutical companies know that. Yet our health is determined mainly not by the pills we choose to swallow, but how we choose to live our lives -- the ways we eat, exercise, work, play, love and relate to others. Realizing that, we can outsmart the efforts of the disease mongerers to pathologize every moment of our existence.
~ Larry Dossey, MD
References:
L. Dossey. Listerine's long shadow: disease mongering and the selling of sickness. Explore. September 2006; 2(5): 379-385.
R. Moynihan, I. Heath I, D. Henry. Selling sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease mongering. British Medical Journal. 2002;324:886-891. Available at: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/324/7342/886.
L. Payer. Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers Are Making You Feel Sick. New York, NY: Wiley & Sons; 1992.
Listerine. Wikipedia. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listerine.
Special Collection on Disease Mongering. Public Library of Science (PloS Medicine). http://www.ploscollections.org/article/browseIssue.action?issue=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fissue.pcol.v07.i02.
Dr. Larry Dossey: Do We Live in a Meaningful Universe?
Dr. Larry Dossey: Is Technology Proof of Universal Consciousness?
Judith Warner: 'We've Got Issues': The Myth Of The Overmedicated Child
Mark Hyman, MD: Is There Toxic Waste In Your Body?
List of pharmaceutical companies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pharmaceutical lobby - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I agree with you that pharmaceutical advertising is bad and should be eliminated, but to suggest that its worse than smoking or liquor is pure, exaggerated nonsense. What illnesses have been "created" by pharmaceutical advertising? Please be specific, with evidence showing that they don't actually exist. What you are talking about is overselling a disease and convincing people that they may have it when they don't. That is not the same as "creating" a disease.
Yep,
Would you include obesity in this category? Although metabolic diseases are serious, the rush to label obesity a disease seems to have more do with paving the way for insurance to cover (dubious) weight loss drugs and weight loss surgery than actually dealing with metabolic diseases.
The fact that we don't have an accurate assessment of the mortality rate after Weight Loss Surgery should be a red flag when it is comparable with the mortality rate of obesity itself.
Peace,
Shannon
".....But as Dr. Beatrice Golomb, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, says, they don't reduce deaths overall. "Any reduction in death from heart disease seen in the data has been completely offset by deaths from other causes," she says. Which raises the question: If statins do not help prolong women's lives, why are so many women taking them?
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1973295-1,00.html#ixzz0rUeGX4K0
Its a good question. ?
It is not "rocket science." Dr. Richard Bernstein developed the glucometer in a form that could be marketed to individuals with the idea that an individual could self-test blood sugar and determine what foods caused a rise in blood sugar. His solution was to then eliminate those foods from the diet. That is so "common sense" that it is mind-boggling. But Big Pharma began marketing glucometers with the idea that the individual would get a high blood sugar reading, then calculate how much insulin to take to "cover" the rise in blood sugar, artificially driving down the blood sugar. Many of the other "diabetes" drugs artificially drove down blood sugar without addressing the cause and some were taken off the market because of the alarming side effects. It just seems so simple...determine what foods raise your blood sugar and don't eat them. I am fortunate (and my brother was also blessed in this regard) that I have severe symptoms from blood sugar/insulin swings and know when I've eaten something that has triggered them. But basic physiology is all it takes to know that glucose requires insulin to metabolize; fat and protein do not. High blood sugar..don't eat carbs. No need for meds.
http://winningtheobesitybattle.wordpress.com
Is THAT the good doctor's argument?? Huh?? Whew.
Dr. Dossey is (evidently) a big fan of prayer. I am praying too. Praying that I never have occasion to call him MY doctor.
The man is saying that we, the public, are lead by the nose to believe that we are all sick and in need of a pill -aka miracle drug- to make us better and deplete our wallets.
I remember a satirical piece from a magazine (Mad?) I read years ago that went something like this:
"Do you wake up in the morning with an intense desire to have to urinate? Does your breath smell bad after a good night's sleep? Do you have crust around your eyes upon waking? Is your hair flat and tangled? Well, then you just might have...cancer! or a bladder infection! Or gingivitis! Or styes around the eye which could lead to... dun, dun, dun...blindness!! OMG!!! Get to a doctor today!! Before it's too late!" Now, that's a perfect example of disease-mongering. From about 40 years ago!
i told them I was cured of Acid reflux by changing my diet and taking probiotics and digestive enzymes. This person gave it a try and 3 weeks later had no symptoms.
It really pays to become informed about medicine relative to both Doctors and natural treatments. In the end, it is much wiser to control your health then letting someone else control it for you.
In defacto quarantine, your immune system can cope with it. Even if a bug is picked up, there's not enuf new victims to infect, and then mutate, to keep it in circulation. Except for a few imported spices, villages grew all their own food. Nobody got e coli. Or poisoned with chemicals, or had the mental development of kids damaged by exposure to either pathogens or chemicals.
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In the comments below, Dana Ullman declares that sheldon101 is actually Dr. Terry Polevoy. That's not true. I don't know where that idea comes from, except that we're both sensible and Canadian.
I'm top posting this comment as it isn't showing up.
Our biographies are different; "Canadian Quackery Watch is the creation of Dr. Terry Polevoy, a medical doctor who lives and works in the Kitchener-Waterloo, and London, Ontario area. He graduated from Michigan State University where he obtained his B.S., and then completed his medical degree at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit...
Anyone familiar with my comments, know that I claim never to have even taken a high school biology course. And I'm a Torontonian. In May, 2010, I discussed Connaught Labs, the Nobel Prize and Professor Michael Bliss. I wrote: "The traditional view is Banting and Best invented insulin.The Nobel prize went to Banting and McLeod. Banting gave half his prize money to Best. McLeod gave half his to Collip. I took one course in history from Michael Bliss, a great historian, who gets lost when it comes to recent politics. Bliss argues that McLeod did not get the credit he deserve."
http://www.wellsphere.com/health-education-article/insulin-salk-and-connaught-laboratories/1118886
Bliss has only taught at one university, the University of Toronto.
I don't know Dr. Polevoy, other than looking at his website. I have invited him to comment on Dana's fantasies.
NPR did a very good story on how the definition of low bone density was dramatically expanded to increase the market for Fosamax.
"How A Bone Disease Grew To Fit The Prescription"
Link to text and audio: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121609815
In one of my previous blogs, I wrote: The New York Times recently uncovered the fact that Pfizer admitted to paying $20 million in the last six months of 2009 alone to 4,500 doctors to "consultation" and to speak on their behalf (and this doesn't include payments to doctors outside of the US) (Duff, 2010). It seems to be time to stop calling them "drug companies" and call them "drug pushers." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/how-scientific-is-modern_b_543158.html
The irony.
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There he goes again, writing the conclusion "many of the "skeptics" who comment here are their [Big Pharma] reps."
Without providing any evidence that this shill claim is true. The best he can do to fool the reader, is point out payments made by Pfizer to doctors to speak out on its behalf. I guess if you apply the laws of homeopathy to this claim by Dana, it is true. The law of homeopathy? That you can fool an amazing amount of people into believing that evidence of nothing is something effective.
What's wrong about Dana'a comment is that it is designed to elicit a response that leads away from the issues at hand. Have I fallen for it? Yup. On the other hand, responding to Dana always leaves me feeling better. I'm also sure Dana feels better after posting one of his flaccid zingers.
But it would be nice if it could avoid making each other feel better and discuss the issues at hand. That's up to Dana. If he continues, I hope he'll be more inventive.
My blog: www.vaccineswork.blogspot.com
Even if I did not know who he is, it is curious why he chooses to hide who he is, especially because he posts so often, and his message is always the same: take more vaccines and more drugs and ignore everything else. I wonder why...though I think that I already know.
I am transparent...why aren't you?
Good show! Half of what you are addressing her are psychological/brain disorders, we know about as much about the brain as we do about living on Mars.