Drug companies over-hype diseases to boost sales

Claims have been made that drug companies are inventing diseases in order to boost sales of their products. Scientists have lobbed accusations that major pharmaceutical firms are hyping up problems like menopause or high cholesterol in order to increase profits. Experts have called this practice “disease-mongering”.

A group of researchers from across the globe met in Australia yesterday to examine the issue, at a first-of-its-kind conference in New South Wales. Ray Moynihan and David Henry, two researchers from Newcastle University have claimed the industry is exaggerating conditions to make them into something more serious than they are.

Some of the conditions promoted in hopes of boosting drug sales have included attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), female sexual dysfunction, bipolar disorder, and “restless leg” syndrome, according to the men.

Osteoporosis and high cholesterol are being treated as diseases in their own right, the researchers explain, turning healthy people into medical patients. The truth is these ailments are normal parts of the aging process. According to the men, these practices only serve to waste precious time and resources and can actually cause medically-induced harm.

It has gone so far that even shyness is quite regularly presented and diagnosed as a type of “social anxiety disorder” with the person receiving prescribed antidepressants for treatment. As Henry pointed out in a radio interview, the problem may involve “creating in people’s minds the idea that a human characteristic, like shyness, is actually a disorder that can be treated.”

The researchers point out that in other cases, such as the issue of male sexual dysfunction, Viagra is promoted not only as a genuine treatment for erectile dysfunction but also as a “lifestyle improver”. The two men have made these claims in the Public Library of Science Medicine Journal.

Moynihan and Henry accuse drug companies of funding disease-awareness media campaigns that are more concerned with that have more to do with boosting drug sales than educating or helping the public. Among other things, the researchers cite the Internet as a prime source for selling the idea of a disorder rapidly and widely.

The researchers see this disease mongering as the selling of sickness to widen the boundaries of illness and foster markets for manufacturers and providers who then sell and deliver treatments. This tactic seems to have proven successful because everyone has some characteristics they aren’t too happy about, and so, tend to look for solutions. If those characteristics can be turned into a “treatable medical condition”, so much the better for drug companies.

They say, “Like the marketing strategies that drive it, disease mongering poses a global challenge to those interested in public health, demanding in turn a global response. It is exemplified most 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.”

Organizers of the conference said they would attempt to make a distinction between legitimate disease-awareness programs and market-driven exercises.

The big drug companies, never one to take things lying down, fired back at the accusations. GlaxoSmithKline said, “We pride ourselves in providing miracle solutions to the health care needs of people every day. We utterly refute any suggestion that we would in any way hype or overplay the very real needs of patients that are treated all over the world. One of the exciting things about medical science is that we are finding new solutions to ailments or problems people have, and this is something good we can offer.”

Pfizer, maker of Viagra, chimed in, “We would refute accusations that the pharmaceutical industry is medicalising society. Treatments that can make serious and potentially life-threatening conditions better should surely be welcomed. Pfizer would only promote prescription medicines to health care professionals, and only in line with what licensing bodies have outlined, for them to use their clinical judgment.”

According to Joel Lexchin of the School of Health Policy and Management at York University in Toronto, “Increasingly, the age profile of men using Viagra reflects the younger audience that Pfizer denies it is targeting. Between 1998 and 2002 the group showing the largest increase in Viagra use was men between the ages of 18 and 45.”

Pfizer does indeed deny that it is targeting specific groups of men; however, their marketing strategy has noticeably been altered since the drug came on the market. Initially, their television ads featured former Senator and presidential hopeful Bob Dole, in his 70s. Now it advertises at NASCAR events and has hired a 39-year-old former Texas Ranger as a spokesman.

To highlight the problem of “medicalising”, Henry and his colleagues invented a new ailment called “motivational deficiency disorder” - basically, laziness – and submitted a report on the “condition” to the British Medical Journal on April 1st.

They wrote, “The condition is claimed to affect up to one in five Australians and is characterized by overwhelming and debilitating apathy,” adding that the disorder could prove fatal because it “reduces the motivation to breathe.”

The report, as the BMJ was well-aware, was an April Fool’s Day joke, but the researcher said some people, including journalists, took it at face value despite the publication date and obvious clues in the report. Experts at the Australian conference believe the manufacturing or hyping of some health conditions is indeed a reality, however.

© Copyright 2007 Insight Journal Online Magazine.

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