Die Krankheitserfinder: Wie wir zu Patienten gemacht werden [Disease Mongers: How we all become Patients]

doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7424.1173

BMJ 2003;327:1173 (15 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7424.1173

reviews

Book

Die Krankheitserfinder: Wie wir zu Patienten gemacht werden [Disease Mongers: How we all become Patients]

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

When the German journalist Jörg Blech read a press releaseclaiming that a university professor had confirmed a new psychiatricdiagnosis for stressed fathers—"caged tiger syndrome"—hefelt enough was enough. Blech, medical correspondent on theweekly news magazine Der Spiegel, decided it was time to writea book about invented diseases.

Jörg Blech

S Fischer, €17.90,pp 256 ISBN 3 10 004410 X www.s-fischer.de

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Die Krankheitserfinder: Wie wir zu Patienten gemacht werden[Disease Mongers. How we all become Patients] is a worthy andwell written successor to Anglo-American publications from the1990s, such as Lynn Payer's Disease-Mongers (see BMJ 2002;324:923[Free Full Text]).

Blech's book, launched by a cover story in Der Spiegel (11 August2003), is a bestseller in Germany, where it seems to have toucheda nerve, judging from the approval of the majority of severalhundred letters to Der Spiegel and to Blech personally, mainlywritten . . . [Full text of this article]

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Annette Tuffs, medical journalist

Neckargemünd, Germany ATuffs@web.de