2007-03-23

Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients by Ray Moynihan, Alan Cassels (2006)

Does it seem that medical conditions which were earlier considered to be age, lifestyle, environment related now becoming medical conditions to be treated with prescription drugs? No surprise here. The medical establishment and big pharma are constantly broadening guidelines on what conditions should be treated with medications (bringing enormous profits to both doctors and pharmaceutical companies). The authors offer histories on high cholesterol, depression, menopause, ADD, high blood pressure, PDD (successor of PMS), social anxiety disorder (shyness), osteoporosis, irritable bowel syndrome, and female sexual dysfunction as examples how these conditions are approved and widened to include more "patients" by the regulators, doctors and pharma companies with a drug to find a use for, and how to "detailers" deliver more and more samples of all kinds of drugs to most doctors. Go and get a second opinion before you start some medication and invest in pharma companies (as there is no end in sight for this)?

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