Letters
The pharmaceutical industry and disease mongering
The industry works to develop drugs, not
diseasesArticle was insulting to people with osteoporosisDrugs can be good for you tooAuthors were incorrect in their comments about Osteoporosis
AustraliaIt was ever thusDéjà vu all over againWill industry's latest moves promote public health or private
profit?Psychiatry should not accept so much commercial sponsorshipAuthors' replyThe industry works to develop drugs, not diseases
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
EDITOR
It is true that the pharmaceutical industry, with others, is
involved in sponsoring the definition of diseases, as suggested by
Moynihan et al.1 Both the pharmaceutical industry and
regulatory authorities that license new medicines need to develop
closely defined definitions so that the safety and efficacy of new
medicines can be properly measured.
More medicalisation is in fact needed, as indicated by Ebrahim and Bonaccorso and Sturchio. 2 3 The rise of guideline led care around the Western world shows that far too many serious diseases are underdiagnosed and undertreated. Failure to put evidence based medicine into practice is quite legitimately addressed by the pharmaceutical industry. Examples include the underuse of statins in the United Kingdom, the delay in the uptake of thrombolysis during the 1980s, and reliance on old psychotropic drugs when newer agents have a much more favourable profile of side effects.
Of course, disease awareness campaigns are
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