In his hilarious stand-up routine, Chris Rock talks about the ubiquitous television drug commercials that “keep naming symptoms till they get one that” the viewer’s got. Sometimes, he says, the ads don’t even tell you what the pill does: “You see a lady on a horse or a man in a tub, and they just keep naming symptoms: ‘Are you depressed?’ ‘Are you lonely?’ ‘Do your teeth hurt?’ ”He adds that one commercial he saw went, “Do you go to bed at night and wake up in the morning?”
“They got that one!” he says. “I got that. I’m sick. I need that pill!”
Big Pharma’s drive for innovation, essential for sustaining profitability, has extended beyond the invention of novel drugs to sponsoring the creation of new diseases, disorders and dysfunctions, and the expansion of old ones. Using informal alliances with physician and patient groups, and with help from public relations experts, drug companies now 'brand' conditions just as they brand medicines.
Contentiously described as 'disease-mongering' by the late Lynn Payer many marketing strategies appear to be about selling sickness in order to sell drugs.
This provocative symposium will describe the problem, explore research agendas and outline policy reforms- and will be of interest to researchers, practitioners , consumers, journalists, policy-makers and industry alike.
Where: Newcastle, NSW, Australia
When: April 11-13 2006
Abstracts by: 1st Nov 2005
Contact: david.henry@newcastle.edu.au
Web: http://www.diseasemongering.org/
Also: http://www.plos.org/disease-mongering/
Also see this article "A disease for every pill":
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051017/moynihan
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