BMJ 2002;324:886-891 ( 13 April )

Education and debate

    Selling sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease mongering
    Commentary: Medicalisation of risk factors

Selling sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease mongering

Ray Moynihan, journalist ^a, Iona Heath, general practitioner ^b, David Henry, professor of clinical pharmacology ^c. 

^a Australian Financial Review, GPO Box 506, Sydney, 2201, Australia, ^b Caversham Group Practice, 4 Peckwater Street, London NW5 2UP, ^c School of Medical Practice and Population Health, Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle, NSW 2308, Australia

Correspondence to: R Moynihan ray_128@hotmail.com

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A lot of money can be made from healthy people who believe they are sick. Pharmaceutical companies sponsor diseases and promote them to prescribers and consumers. Ray Moynihan, Iona Heath, and David Henry give examples of "disease mongering" and suggest how to prevent the growth of this practice

There's a lot of money to be made from telling healthy people they're sick. Some forms of medicalising ordinary life may now be better described as disease mongering: widening the boundaries of treatable illness in order to expand markets for those who sell and deliver treatments. ^{1 2} Pharmaceutical companies are actively involved in sponsoring the definition of diseases and promoting them to both prescribers and consumers. The social construction of illness is being replaced by the corporate construction of disease.

Whereas some aspects of medicalisation are the subject of ongoing debate, the mechanics of corporate backed disease mongering, and its impact on public . . . [Full text of this article]

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