Selling Sickness How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients

by Moynihan, Ray; Cassels, Alan

• ISBN13: 9781560258568
• ISBN10: 156025856X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-06-23
• Publisher: Bold Type Books

Summary

Thirty years ago, Henry Gadsden, the head of Merck, one of the world's largest drug companies, told Fortune magazine that he wanted Merck to be more like chewing gum maker Wrigley's. It had long been his dream to make drugs for healthy people so that Merck could "sell to everyone." Gadsden's dream now drives the marketing machinery of the most profitable industry on earth. Drug companies are systematically working to widen the very boundaries that define illness, and the markets for medication grow ever larger. Mild problems are redefined as serious illness and common complaints are labeled as medical conditions requiring drug treatments. Runny noses are now allergic rhinitis, PMS has become a psychiatric disorder, and hyperactive children have ADD. When it comes to conditions like high cholesterol or low bone density, being "at risk" is sold as a disease. Selling Sickness reveals how widening the boundaries of illness and lowering the threshold for treatments is creating millions of new patients and billions in new profits, in turn threatening to bankrupt health-care systems all over the world. As more and more of ordinary life becomes medicalized, the industry moves ever closer to Gadsden's dream: "selling to everyone."

Author Biography

Ray Moynihan is one of the world's leading health writers. His work has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Australian Financial Review, the British Medical Journal, Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine. Alan Cassels is a Canadian researcher and writer who works on drug policy issues.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Selling sickness	ix
Selling to everyone
High cholesterol	1	(21)
Doughnuts for the doctors
Depression	22	(19)
Working with celebrities
Menopause	41	(20)
Partnering with patients
Attention deficit disorder	61	(21)
Making risks into medical conditions
High blood pressure	82	(17)
Advertising disease
Premenstrual dysphoric disorder	99	(20)
Shaping public perceptions
Social anxiety disorder	119	(20)
Testing the markets
Osteoporosis	139	(17)
Taming the watchdogs
Irritable bowel syndrome	156	(19)
Subverting the selling
Female sexual dysfunction	175	(21)
Epilogue: What can we do?	196	(5)
Notes	201	(41)
Acknowledgments	242	(5)
Index	247