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| Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients | 
 enlarge | Authors: Ray Moynihan, Alan Cassels
Publisher: Nation Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $8.09
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Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 30225
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 156025856X
Dewey Decimal Number: 338
EAN: 9781560258568
ASIN: 156025856X
Publication Date: June 22, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! NEW Book! May have remainder mark. Most orders ship within 1 BUSINESS DAY with ORDER CONFIRMATION.
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Product Description
Thirty years ago, Henry Gadsden, the head of Merck, one of the world's largest drug companies, told Fortune magazine that he wanted Merck to be more like chewing gum maker Wrigley's. It had long been his dream to make drugs for healthy people so that Merck could "sell to everyone." Gadsden's dream now drives the marketing machinery of the most profitable industry on earth. Drug companies are systematically working to widen the very boundaries that define illness, and the markets for medication grow ever larger. Mild problems are redefined as serious illness and common complaints are labeled as medical conditions requiring drug treatments. Runny noses are now allergic rhinitis, PMS has become a psychiatric disorder, and hyperactive children have ADD. When it comes to conditions like high cholesterol or low bone density, being "at risk" is sold as a disease. Selling Sickness reveals how widening the boundaries of illness and lowering the threshold for treatments is creating millions of new patients and billions in new profits, in turn threatening to bankrupt health-care systems all over the world. As more and more of ordinary life becomes medicalized, the industry moves ever closer to Gadsden's dream: "selling to everyone."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 Oversimplifying a complicated problem January 28, 2006
67 out of 96 found this review helpful
As a physician, I was very interested in this book. I deal with phamaceutical representatives occasionally as well as patients coming in asking about "diseases" that they learn about on TV. While I agree completely with some of the examples of pharmaceutical excess detailed in this book, a lot of the book relies on alarmist anecdotes rather than hard science. While not written for medical professionals, this book oversimplifies some complex medical issues. For instance,the primary reason to treat elevated blood pressures is to prevent strokes- this isn't even mentioned in this book. And just because elevation of blood pressure is perhaps a normal part of aging rather than a "disease", it does not mean that people might not benefit from treatment. Likewise, in their alarmist discussion of cholesterol medications, they don't bother to note that the incidence of deaths from heart disease in this country has dropped by about 50% in the past 35 years- some of that is attributable to decreased smoking, aspirin and angioplasties but a lot is due to cholesterol lowering medications.
Unfortunately, the treatment of real medical problems such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia and osteoporosis is hardly differentiated from such "fad diseases" such as social anxiety disorder and premenstrual dysphoric disorder. I think the pharmaceutical industry is doing everybody a disservice by promoting new diseases, but I also think this book is doing patients a disservice by unnecessarily frightening them about important medications.
Overall, I am still glad I read the book and would recommend it to others but am very worried what medically unsophisticated readers may draw from it.
 Big Pharma Mashed Again October 2, 2005
65 out of 75 found this review helpful
An excellent expose of 10 or more examples of manufactured or exaggerated illness, from adult attention deficit disorder to osteoporosis. Overblown promotions of drugs and concealment of drug side-effects well explained. Big Pharma's use of public relations firms to create fear of some more or less normal condition is shown. Big Pharma's capture of the FDA and other agencies is shown.
Big Pharma's secret ownership of some patient support groups is shown, as is its control of much Continuing Medical Education. Its lobbying is legendary.
Even if you know about this disgrace in the USA, there are many aspects that may be new to you, so read this book.
Easy to read, good referencing, decent index.
Weak technically, but this might have been a desire not to stress the reader. Still, authors seem unaware that older people with the highest cholesterol and LDL levels live the longest (Schupf N, Costa R, Luchsinger J, et al. (2005). Relationship Between Plasma Lipids and All-Cause Mortality in Nondemented Elderly. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 53:219-226.), or that blood pressure rises naturally with age, and only the top 10% of BP levels can be treated with any benefit.
All Too True July 3, 2005
38 out of 49 found this review helpful
This is a well documented book that clearly shows how Pharmaceutical Companies have more of THEIR interests at heart, than our health. The tie-ins of the people at the top of the drug companies show well how they cash in with new prescriptions that are astronomically expensive, and their prices rise, along with the balance of their bank accounts.
This is an excellent book that can only help you to make wiser choices for your own health and well being.
From the Sunday Telegraph July 27, 2005
33 out of 50 found this review helpful
"Selling Sickness should be read by everyone on medication or considering going on medication. Read it, rage, then draw up a list of questions for your GP."
Lucy Clark, Sunday Telegraph, June 5, 2005
Peak oil and Health -- you might not even be ill September 17, 2006
31 out of 32 found this review helpful
After oil production peaks, higher energy prices are likely to sink the world economy into a never-ending depression, so it will be important to stay healthy, because everything, and especially medical costs, are likely to be more expensive in the future. Before you incur high medical costs you can little afford, make sure you're even ill first. A great deal of fat could be cut out of the health care system right now and used instead to help people who are truly ill.
Getting healthy people to buy drugs they don't need, which won't cure what they don't have, and potentially have unpleasant to dire side effects, sounds like such a crazy premise, even Hollywood wouldn't buy it.
Yet that's just what's happened, as Moynihan and Cassels document in their book "Selling Sickness". The 500 billion dollar pharmaceutical industry has plenty of money to spend convincing us that our ordinary travails mask mental illnesses, and common aches and pains need treatment.
Americans represent five percent of the world's population, but we consume fifty percent of prescription drugs.
Millions of healthy people have asked their doctor about that purple pill they saw on television, or been given drugs pushed by the army of 80,000 drug salesmen who've influenced your doctor with free lunches and far more.
Many people now take drugs that may have harmful side effects and won't make much of a difference in improving their health. Hormone replacement therapy turned out to increase the chance of heart attacks for women, one of the blockbuster cholesterol lowering drugs was withdrawn from the market because it was implicated in causing deaths.
The FDA isn't looking out for you either, as shown in the chapter on irritable bowel syndrome. The FDA let the drug Lotronex remain far too long on the market, despite evidence coming in from doctors that it was killing, hospitalizing, and causing complications never seen before by doctors treating this syndrome.
How has the pharmaceutical industry pulled this off?
1)The point where you "need" to take a particular drug is continually lowered (i.e. for cholesterol, high blood pressure, etc), often far lower than necessary. Many of the doctors setting these lower standards have financial ties to the drug companies, so when more drugs are sold to more people, they stand to profit. Every time the good cholesterol level is lowered, millions of new customers are created overnight.
2)New diseases are invented that don't really exist. Menopause, for example, is a natural part of the life cycle. It's doubtful that attention deficit disorder and other "diseases" in the book exist.
3)Pharmaceutical companies exaggerate the good the drug will do for you. Brittle bones are only 13% of the problem in osteoporosis, which tends to affect people the last chapter of their life. Far more important is: don't fall! Be sure you've got good eyeglasses; your rugs won't slip, exercise, and so on.
4)You'll never see ads telling you the one thing you need to know: if you want to lead a healthy life, eat a good diet and exercise. But you will see all sorts of deceptive ads, which this book does a good job of describing. You'll be angry and sometimes shocked when you see the dirty tricks used to promote drugs.
There are people who stand to benefit from these drugs, the book is definitely not saying they're totally useless, and in fact, many of the people who do need these drugs aren't getting them.
But before you decide to take a drug, be sure to do research first to make sure you really need it. If you have one of the following, or know someone who does, you might want to read this book, which discusses depression, high cholesterol, menopause, attention deficit disorder, high blood pressure, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, social anxiety disorder, osteoporosis, irritable bowel syndrome, and female sexual dysfunction. The final chapter is entitled "What can we do?"
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