Disease Mongering

Perhaps you have heard the term Disease Mongering? It is defined as the, "practice of widening the diagnostic boundaries of illnesses, and promoting public awareness of such, in order to expand the markets for those who sell and deliver treatments, which may include pharmaceutical companies, physicians, and other professional or consumer organizations".

What this means is that we, the general public, are being made the targets of the medical establishment and in particular, Big Pharma. We have a big bull's eye on us saying "we need more medical treatment". It is up to the medical establishment to concoct a few terms for our everyday "conditions", and to expand upon the ones we already have so that they can profit from us and our insurers. Those various aches and pains, tics and quirks, etc, that we used to live with are now "diseases" and we need treatment with artificial pharmaceutical medications under a professionally trained eye...

A 2006 issue of Public Library of Science was dedicated to disease mongering. By my count it contained ten articles covering disease mongering including topics such as the expansion of ADHD, restless legs and erectile dysfunction. No doubt, they are legitimate causes, but the problem lies with the expanding diagnosis of these issues.

An example of expansion of a non-disease as a disease is found in cholesterol levels. Our measured levels of cholesterol, as defined by circulating levels of certain lipoproteins, has changed with time in regards to what is considered normal and high. Medical treatments, usually via a statin drug (HMG CoA Reductase Inhibitor) is the usual course of treatment by the medical establishment and one of the huge profit centers for Big Pharma. Therefore, declaring a certain level of a particular lipoprotein as "good", HDL, or "bad", LDL, and having a medicine (with substantial risk for side effects) that can alter those levels offers incentive and moral hazard to Big Pharma and the medical establishment to amend its recommendation as to what levels of lipoproteins we should all be sporting - despite reams of research to the contrary. Through time, what is considered as healthy levels of HDL and LDL have been changed, and of course, their medications will "fix" us to the current appropriate levels.

A new example of coming expansion in the treatment of psychological disorders was out this week. Here is a clip from one report:

A new survey suggests that young adults in the United States have stunningly high rates of psychiatric disorders, such as substance abuse, nicotine addiction, personality disorders or other mental-health conditions.

The high rates were found in people ages 18 to 24, whether or not they were college students.

The study, published Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found that one-half of the individuals surveyed met the criteria for a psychiatric disorder but only one-fourth of those had sought treatment.

Mental illness is certainly a legitimate illness and one not to be taken lightly, but 50% of college aged people? Having lived through those years I realize that they are a time of change, perhaps moving from one place to another, figuring out who you are out from under your parents wings, increased responsibilities...in other words facing stresses we all must face. So here they seem to be medicalizing and diagnosing mental-health conditions for what we, in the old days, would call Growing Up.

A clip from another report:

Study co-author Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute called the widespread lack of treatment particularly worrisome. He said it should alert not only "students and parents, but also deans and people who run college mental health services about the need to extend access to treatment."

"Widespread lack of treatment" makes the researcher worried. That should be a definite tip-off to disease mongering in those few words. Some of the issues that these researchers are dealing with probably do need some treatment, but some of the issues are part of college life and always have been...for example, partying - aka "substance abuse". Personality disorders are also worrisome to these guys, and not to belittle those with some legitimate manifestation of this disease, but we all have our weird personality traits and nuances, and some of us are not social butterflies loaded with charisma - but we are not all set to erupt into violence if we aren't loaded with pharmaceutical agents to calm us down either. Medical buyer beware, disease mongering is reality, think for yourselves and do not assume the guy with the MD after his name is a god.