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Selling Sickness:

How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All Into Patients
Front Cover
19 Reviews
Nation Books, Jun 22, 2006 - Medical - 254 pages
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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Review: Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All into Patients

User Review  - Bob - Goodreads

There is a very good chance that if you are taking medication for high cholesterol, depression, ADD, high blood pressure, and/or osteoporosis you don't need it, it is not helping you and you are ... Read full review

Review: Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All into Patients

User Review  - Jeff - Goodreads

This book is a quick read focused on the broad links between pharmaceutical companies, advertisement agencies and the medical community to expand and create illnesses. The most revealing and ... Read full review

All 19 reviews »

Related books

Contents

Selling to everyone High cholesterol
1
Doughnuts for the doctors Depression
22
Working with celebrities Menopause
41
Partnering with patients Attention deficit disorder
61
Making risks into medical conditions High blood pressure
82
Advertising disease Premenstrual dysphoric disorder
99
Shaping public perceptions Social anxiety disorder
119
Testing the markets Osteoporosis
139
Taming the watchdogs Irritable bowel syndrome
156
Subverting the selling Female sexual dysfunction
175
What can we do?
196
Notes
201
Acknowledgments
242
Index
247
Copyright

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References from web pages

Selling Sickness
Explores the unhealthy relationships between society, medical science and the pharmaceutical industry as it promotes not just drugs but also the latest ...
www.frif.com/ new2005/ sell.html

Prologue - Selling sickness - Moynihan & Cassels
Prologue Selling sickness by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels. Thirty years ago the head of one of the world's best-known drug companies made some very candid ...
www.ahrp.org/ infomail/ 05/ 09/ SellingSickness.php

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - September 2005: Selling ...
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www.policyalternatives.ca/ MonitorIssues/ 2005/ 09/ MonitorIssue1201/

Selling sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease mongering
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www.vaccinationnews.com/ DailyNews/ April2002/ SellingSickness.htm

Selling Sickness
Selling Sickness. Details. Comments. More from user. Selling Sickness - 70 min - Oct 5, 2004. () Rate:. Selling Sickness explores the unhealthy ...
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Selling Sickness
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JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, is a highly cited weekly medical journal that publishes peer-reviewed original medical research ...
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About the author (2006)

Ray Moynihan is one of the world's leading health writers. His work has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Australian Financial Review, the British Medical Journal, Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine. Alan Cassels is a Canadian researcher and writer who works on drug policy issues.

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