Drug firms 'inventing diseases'
BBC NEWS TUESDAY 11, 2006

Pharmaceutical firms are inventing diseases to sell more drugs, researchers have
warned. Disease-mongering promotes non-existent diseases and exaggerates mild
problems to boost profits, the Public Library of Science Medicine reported.
Researchers at Newcastle University in Australia said firms were putting healthy
people at risk by medicalising conditions such as menopause. But the
pharmaceutical industry denied it invented diseases.

DISEASE-MONGERING Restless legs - Prevalence of rare condition exaggerated
Irritable bowel syndrome - Promoted as a serious illness needing therapy, when
usually a mild problem Menopause - Too often medicalised as a disorder when
really a normal part of life

Report authors David Henry and Ray Moynihan criticised attempts to convince the
public in the US that 43% of women live with sexual dysfunction. They also said
that risk factors like high cholesterol and osteoporosis were being presented as
diseases - and rare conditions such as restless leg condition and mild problems
of irritable bowel syndrome were exaggerated. The report said:
"Disease-mongering is the selling of sickness that widens the boundaries of
illness and grows the markets for those who sell and deliver treatments.

Campaigns
"It is exemplified mostly explicitly by many pharmaceutical industry-funded
disease awareness campaigns - more often designed to sell drugs than to
illuminate or to inform or educate about the prevention of illness or the
maintenance of health." The researchers called on doctors, patients and support
groups to be aware of the marketing tactics of the pharmaceutical industry and
for more research into the way in which conditions are presented. They added:
"The motives of health professionals and health advocacy groups may well be the
welfare of patients, rather than any direct self-interested financial benefit,
but we believe that too often marketers are able to crudely manipulate those
motivations.
"Disentangling the different motivations of the different actors in
disease-mongering will be a key step towards a better understanding of this
phenomenon."

But Richard Ley, of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said
the research was centred on the US where the drugs industry had much more
freedom to promote their products to the public. "The way you can advertise is
much more restricted in the UK so it is wrong to extrapolate it. "Also, it is
not right to say the industry invents diseases, we don't. It is up to doctors to
decide what treatment to give people, we can't tell them."



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