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

Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients by Ray Moynihan, Alan Cassels
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Publisher: Nation Books (6/22/2006) ISBN: 156025856X Edition: 1 Paperback: 272 pages Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches Average Customer Review: based on 24 reviews.
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."

Customer Reviews
Must read before popping another pill. A must-read for everyone who is on prescription medications or has a loved one on meds. Especially, if you think the FDA protects consumers.

A must read This is an excellent and well written book. If you want to be informed, I suggest you read it. I won't bother restating what others have said. I also notice that physicians here rating the book don't like it as much. I wonder why?

Flim Flam Code words, "Disease," "Clinically Proven," and "Blind Study." These are the catch words, we hear in the brain washing TV commericals, we are bombarded with each and every time we sit down in front of the "Boob Tube." All this and so much more are here within these pages. Statins, cholesterol lowering drugs, which create more problems than they solve, with the very likihood of liver disfunction, happens to be the best sellers right now, even though diet adjustment, and exercise are less risky, far cheaper, and more effective. Oh and beware the numbers, as to what is high cholesterol or low, have been changed to suit "Big Pharma." Those who sit on the panel at the FDA, have finanical ties to "Big Pharma," and ignore the damages left behind by taking simple disorders like constipation, declairing constipation a disease. Because the FDA has declaired only a drug, can cure a disease. Next prescribing a drug via your doctor, who is likely getting some type of a kick back of one kind or another, from "Big Pharma." A drug instead of recommending more fibre in the diet, more water, and exercise. Because of the FDA mandate, it is illegal for such a recommendation to be issued. Let us not forget that members of our dollar chasing Congress, and Senate go on to become advisors, or lobbyists for "Big Pharma," and try to tell us ther is no conflict here. Even though to keep "Big Pharma" afloat billions are spent on Congress, the Senate, and marketing. I wonder if that is why the "Junk" is so expensive? Of course more people die from prescription drugs, than die from illegal street drugs. Yes look it up. This book should open the eyes of us all if just to make us read, and research more. Because too many of us hear about this disease and that on the boob tube, and then ask their doctor for this new "Magic Bullet." Some will dismiss this book as "Alarmist" rantings, and that there is really nothing to be concerned about. Some will laugh, others will ask their doctor's many more questions. Whatever, get the book and try to get pass the soft music, or flashy graphics from Park Avenue, and understand, it is all about money. "Big Pharma" money that is.

very compelling This book was a real eye-opener. The authors write very clearly, and it is well referenced. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants an introduction to just how crooked the relationship can be between 'Big pharma' and the medical profession.

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.