Medicalizing Disease For Fun And Profit

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_roy_murt_060428_medicalizing__22_disea.h\

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April 28, 2006

 

Medicalizing " Disease " For Fun And Profit

 

by Roy Murtishaw

 

http://www.opednews.com

 

Medicalizing " Disease " For Fun And Profit

 

According to a set of essays published in the Public Library of

Science Medicine, drug companies are systematically inventing

non-existent diseases, or exaggerating minor ones, in order to sell

more of their products.

 

 

( a more accurate description would be that, in most cases they are selling

drugs to continually suppress a symptom, which will have nothing to do with

changing the underlying cause. It will continue. Then the patient will usually

experience further illness due to the drug's toxicity. Oh boy, more money. In

most other cases they are medicalizing a normal function, some nutritional

deficiency, or a toxic exposure of some kind. Biggest scam ever? )

 

 

 

The practice turns healthy people into patients, and places many of

them at risk of medically induced harm.

 

Minor, normal problems, such as the symptoms of menopause, have been

" medicalized " into treatable illnesses, and risk factors like high

cholesterol are being treated as diseases in their own right.

Conditions including female sexual dysfunction, attention deficit

hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and " restless legs syndrome " have all

been exaggerated and promoted by companies hoping to sell drugs.

 

Even ordinary shyness is often defined by drug companies as a social

anxiety disorder to be treated with antidepressants.

Richard Ley, of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical

Industry, pointed out that some countries, including Britain, have

legal safeguards against drug industry " disease mongering. " Most of

the criticisms, he argued, apply primarily to countries like the

United States, where drugs can be advertised directly to patients.

 

Public Library of Science Medicine April 11, 2006; 3(4)

Times Online April 11, 2006

 

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Psychiatry is the worst offender, in my opinion. Roy

--\

-

 

A life-long friend challenged me about my comments regarding the role

of psychiatry in medicalizing diseases.:

 

@aol.com wrote:

I think I knew that! We've got enough 'real' diseases to contend with

in this life, right? But why do you comment that psychiatry is the

worst offender....your previous bread-and-butter of sorts, no less?

Gail

 

My response follows :

 

Dear Gail,

Please! I am a psychologist... NOT a PSYCHIATRIST!! In fact, I despise

psychiatry. My experience was psychiatrists were often incredibly poor

physicians..borne out by the fact Psychiatry attracts the absolutely

worst medical students, In fact , the old saw that a psychiatrist is a

" Former med student who could never learn to tolerate the sight of

blood " is fairly accurate. However the situation is even worse now as

psychiatry has been nearly abandoned by native-born Americans and is

now filled with foreign trained doctors; many of whom barely speak

English...I kid you not.

 

Psychiatry has always grossly over-relied upon drugs, over-prescribed

them in both quantity and quality. Psychoactive drugs claim the most

addiction complications of any substances excepting nicotine in

America and has owned that distinction since the 1960s.

 

Valium,Ritalin,Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, etc.are incredibly dangerous and

are being prescibed by the millions willy-nilly by idiots otherwise

called physicians all over this country every day. I strongly

encourage your ing and/or Googling the wonderful Evelyn Pringle's

perceptive articles concerning these issues; many of which are found

at www.opednews.com Roy

 

 

 

I'm a 62 year-old disabled psychotherapist who is a proud liberal

despite living amidst extreme conservatives all my life. I have also

been a single father to a 36-year-old Lawrence Berkley liberal and am

now a single father of a 12-year-old budding liberal.

 

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