You're not healthy I tell you! You're not! You're not! You're not!
A Disease for Every Pill
By Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels
The Nation
10/17/2005
The drug companies are spending more money on ads that sell directly to consumers (read: the people the doctors prescribe pills to) and creating descriptions of diseases that don’t even exist. The article focuses on the repackaging and renaming of Prozac for the purpose of selling it to young women for pre-menstrual issues. They’ve given it a name and the symptom are nothing more than the normal mood swings a woman goes through right before she gets her period.
This really isn’t anything new. I’ve seen drug company created questionnaires that are written in such a vague and misleading way that anyone could be said to have the disease in question (why doctors choose to hand these things out to patients, I will never understand), and the diet industry has been making a whole lot of money off of the I’m-ugly fears of young women for decades (if not longer). Addictive diet pills have replaced the purposeful infection with a tapeworm (popular in the Victorian era).
Drug companies are in existence to make money, advertising is in existence to convince people to spend money, drug companies using phrasing and technique to sell things via advertising is nothing more than standard big business practice.
Besides, we are still firmly imbedded ion the better-living-through-chemistry age. Better to take a drug than to address things in your life that might allow you to fix (or, at least, live with) the issue chemical free.
Where’s the money in that?
I saw a comedy routine by Chris Rock where he made the point that “You make your money on the come back.” That is dead-on analysis of the situation, if you ask me. It’s not about addressing ailments, or finding cures, it’s about creating products that people will be tied to for the rest of their lives, thereby pulling in a hefty bottom line.
Kind of makes me wonder how many diseases have actually been researched to the point of a cure, only to have the cure withheld from public announcement or distribution. You can’t sell things to people who aren’t (or don’t believe they are) sick.
By Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels
The Nation
10/17/2005
The drug companies are spending more money on ads that sell directly to consumers (read: the people the doctors prescribe pills to) and creating descriptions of diseases that don’t even exist. The article focuses on the repackaging and renaming of Prozac for the purpose of selling it to young women for pre-menstrual issues. They’ve given it a name and the symptom are nothing more than the normal mood swings a woman goes through right before she gets her period.
This really isn’t anything new. I’ve seen drug company created questionnaires that are written in such a vague and misleading way that anyone could be said to have the disease in question (why doctors choose to hand these things out to patients, I will never understand), and the diet industry has been making a whole lot of money off of the I’m-ugly fears of young women for decades (if not longer). Addictive diet pills have replaced the purposeful infection with a tapeworm (popular in the Victorian era).
Drug companies are in existence to make money, advertising is in existence to convince people to spend money, drug companies using phrasing and technique to sell things via advertising is nothing more than standard big business practice.
Besides, we are still firmly imbedded ion the better-living-through-chemistry age. Better to take a drug than to address things in your life that might allow you to fix (or, at least, live with) the issue chemical free.
Where’s the money in that?
I saw a comedy routine by Chris Rock where he made the point that “You make your money on the come back.” That is dead-on analysis of the situation, if you ask me. It’s not about addressing ailments, or finding cures, it’s about creating products that people will be tied to for the rest of their lives, thereby pulling in a hefty bottom line.
Kind of makes me wonder how many diseases have actually been researched to the point of a cure, only to have the cure withheld from public announcement or distribution. You can’t sell things to people who aren’t (or don’t believe they are) sick.
posted by A at 8:19 AM
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