Drug firms in the business of 'diseasemongering'

Australian scientists have accused drug companies of inventing diseases to sell more of their products.

In a new report researchers at Newcastle University in Australia say the major pharmaceutical firms are exaggerating conditions such as high cholesterol or the symptoms of the menopause, in a bid to increase profits and are putting healthy people at risk by medicalising such problems.

The researchers say pharmaceutical firms are inventing diseases to sell more drugs,by promoting non-existent diseases and exaggerating mild problems in order to boost profits.

Experts from from Britain and around the world are meeting in Newcastle, Australia to discuss what they have labelled 'diseasemongering'.

Report authors David Henry and Ray Moynihan, of Newcastle University, claim the industry is exaggerating conditions such as restless legs, irritable bowel syndrome and the menopause as serious illnesses needing therapy, when they are usually a mild problem or a normal part of life.

Henry and Moynihan have criticised attempts to convince the public in the U.S. that 43% of women live with sexual dysfunction.

They also said that risk factors like high cholesterol and osteoporosis were being presented as diseases.

They say the situation is 'exemplified mostly explicitly by many pharmaceutical industry-funded disease awareness campaigns, designed to sell drugs rather than to illuminate, inform or educate about the prevention of illness or the maintenance of health'.

They are calling on doctors, patients and support groups to be aware of the marketing tactics of the pharmaceutical industry and for more research into the way in which conditions are presented.

They add that while the motives of health professionals and health advocacy groups may well be the welfare of patients, rather than any direct self-interested financial benefit, all too often marketers are able to crudely manipulate such motivations.

The report is published online in the Public Library of Science Medicine.