04.11.06
Making Money Inventing Diseases
I found this article on timesonline.co.uk titled: Drugs companies ‘inventing diseases to boost their profits’. Its a short article talking about “diseasemongering” by the drug industry for promoting non-existent illnesses or exaggerating minor ones in order to make money.
For example, how many drugs and medications are being sold to help fight against osteoporosis. Osteoperosis is not really a disease, but rather a risk factor for broken bones. Shyness is also interpreted as a social anxiety disorder, that is treated with antidepressants.
Typically these drugs are marketed as a type of pancea to woe aspects of the human condition. This dehumanizes people- people are not solely their strengths and their aspirations, but also their fraility and weaknesses. The knowledge that “all things that begin must end” causes us to make the most of the journey inbetween, its ups and its downs.
elisa said,
April 14, 2006 at 9:08 am
Isn’t that freaky! I heard about this in a Nutrition course I took a while back. It simply freaked me out to think that there is someone out there willing to make another person think they have a disease when they really don’t. The ones that get me are the anti-depressent/anti-anxiety drugs. Why doesn’t someone just tell these people about Tai Chi or deep breathing???? How about just saying – hey, life is all about ups and downs. Life is a tear and a smile : to steal Gibran’s words
About a year or so ago, I heard of RLS – Restless Leg Syndrom. Now I see commercials for it.