surviveCANCER Foundation

Hand in hand with the discussion on Herceptin is the topic of “creating” diseases that only the drug companies can cure. Would you believe….?

In the past 6 months or so, I have seen quite a number of articles on this very topic. Again, here today is yet another one dealing with “created illnesses” in order to bolster sales of drugs which are then marketed through grassroots sales campaigns by getting the end user (you) to ask your doctor to prescribe the drug in question. This short clip came from the PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE MEDICINE. Think about what is being posted here. It is irritating, disgusting and frankly borders on unethical. Yet we put up with this very thing day in and day out. We have our congressmen and senators in Washington actually sponsoring bills that would make this practice a protected entity, free from lawsuit and public scrutiny no matter what the consequences. This is not right. You need to be aware that we are being scammed.

I am not saying that there is not a place for the pharmaceutical industry. I am saying that we need to be aware that their benevolence is not altruistic but profit motivated in a very, very excessive way. This is not right. We go to the medical profession to help us when we are truly in need. We do not need to be faced with more and more and more unnecessary poisons stuffed into our bodies simply for the profit concerns of a group of companies.

Be careful what you ask for, you may just get it!

According to a set of essays published in the Public Library of Science Medicine, drug companies are systematically inventing non-existent diseases, or exaggerating minor ones, in order to sell more of their products.

The practice turns healthy people into patients, and places many of them at risk of medically induced harm.
Minor, normal problems, such as the symptoms of menopause, have been "medicalized" into treatable illnesses, and risk factors like high cholesterol are being treated as diseases in their own right. Conditions including female sexual dysfunction, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and "restless legs syndrome" have all been exaggerated and promoted by companies hoping to sell drugs. Even ordinary shyness is often defined by drug companies as a social anxiety disorder to be treated with antidepressants.

Richard Ley, of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, pointed out that some countries, including Britain, have legal safeguards against drug industry "disease mongering." Most of the criticisms, he argued, apply primarily to countries like the United States, where drugs can be advertised directly to patients.

SOURCES:
Public Library of Science Medicine April 11, 2006; 3(4)

Times Online April 11, 2006