Australian journalist Ray Moynihan and Professor David Henry are the guest editors of the April 2006 theme issue of PLoS Medicine on disease mongering. They also just hosted an international conference on the topic.
They write: "In our view, disease mongering is the selling of sickness that widens the boundaries of illness and grows the markets for those who sell and deliver treatments. 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. In this theme issue and elsewhere, observers have described different forms of disease mongering: aspects of ordinary life, such as menopause, being medicalised; mild problems portrayed as serious illnesses, as has occurred in the drug-company-sponsored promotion of irritable bowel syndrome and risk factors, such as high cholesterol and osteoporosis, being framed as diseases."
PLoS Medicine is publishing several other articles on disease-mongering in the new special issue. Go to their website to see all of them.
PLEASE NOTE: disease-mongering will be one of the things we look for in a new U.S. website that evaluates and grades U.S. health news coverage. The site will debut next Monday, April 17. It is http://www.HealthNewsReview.org. More details later.
Posted by schwitz at April 14, 2006 07:40 AM | TrackBack