Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients

by Alan Cassels and Ray Moynihan

Book Overview

Thirty years ago, the head of the drug company Merck made some remarkably candid comments about his distress that his company's market was limited to sick people. Suggesting he would like Merck to be... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560256974
• ISBN13: 9781560256977
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Nation Books
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.3" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Buying into SICKNESS

Ray Moynihan is a legend, and more importantly he appears to have some integrity and intelligence. While other so-called journalists unquestioningly accept what is spoon-fed to them from big Pharma, Moynihan bothers to look beneath the veneer created by PR and spin-doctoring. The book has been written so that non-medical people can understand it, but is referenced in order that health professionals can check the veracity of his claims - and he really doesn't claim anything he can't back up by referenced literature. I applaud Dr Pelton for reading the book at all, but feel a little sad that he doesn't go a little further and discover for himself that most modern theory of disease is based on little more than wishful thinking, huge profits and massive disinformation campaigns.

Peak oil and Health -- you might not even be ill

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 yo

Big Pharma Mashed Again

An excellent exposé 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.

Television Drug Advertising

It's the Great American Way, gone a little bit crazy. There have always been beople who will tell you that by using their product your life would be better. And now television has come about so they can tell millions of people at once. In this case the product being sold is drugs. But what people are buying is peace of mind. It may be that that new car will help you get the girl, or maybe it's Viagra. The ones I particularly like are those commercials that can't quite describe what the illness is, but taking this drug will fix it. And I also like the bit in all of them where they have to tell about things like side effects. Strangely enough this bit seems to be spoken very fast. My favorite one here is if you get an erection that lasts more than four hours seek medical help. ==While the authors make a good case that the drug companies are treating non-existing illnesses, is it any real difference from telling us that brand name pain killers are better than those bottles labeled aspirin, acetaminophen or ibuprofen. I think the book is quite right, the drug companies want to sell us more drugs. And they will find people willing to pay for them. I enjoyed reading the book, it details how the drug companies have created a world where the US with 5% of the population buys 50% of the drugs sold. And our longevity rates are not at the top of the lists.

All Too True

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.