Disease mongering

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
PLoS Medicine
(2006)

Disease mongering is a pejorative term for the practice of widening the diagnostic boundaries of illnesses and aggressively promoting their public awareness in order to expand the markets for treatment.

Among the entities benefiting from selling and delivering treatments are

bogus or unrecognised diagnoses
.

Term

The term "

halitosis
(bad breath).

Payer defined disease mongering as a set of practices which include the following:[1]

  • Stating that normal human experiences are abnormal and in need of treatment
  • Claiming to recognize suffering which is not present
  • Defining a disease such that a large number of people have it
  • Defining a disease's cause as some ambiguous deficiency or
    hormonal imbalance
  • Associating a disease with a public relations
    spin
    campaign
  • Directing the framing of public discussion of a disease
  • Intentionally misusing statistics to exaggerate treatment benefits
  • Setting a dubious clinical endpoint in research
  • Advertising a treatment as without side effect
  • Advertising a common symptom as a serious disease

The incidence of conditions not previously defined as illness being

medicalised as "diseases" is difficult to scientifically assess due to the inherent social and political nature of the definition of what constitutes a disease, and what aspects of the human condition should be managed according to a medical model.[2] For example, halitosis, the condition which prompted Payer to coin the phrase "disease mongering", isn't merely an imagined social stigma but can stem from any of a wide spectrum of conditions spanning from bacterial infection of the gums to kidney failure, and is recognized by the Scientific Council of the American Dental Association as "a recognizable condition which deserves professional attention".[3]

Examples

Australian journalist

BMJ titled "Scientists find new disease: motivational deficiency disorder".[6]

Other conditions which have been cited as examples of disease mongering include:

FDA advisory committee voted to limit the use of testosterone replacement therapy products due to potentially increased cardiovascular risk associated with their use.[13]

A 2006

PLoS Medicine, explored the phenomenon of disease mongering.[14]

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-0471543855
    .
  2. PMID 19910354
    .
  3. ^ "nypediatricdds.com" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-10-18.
  4. ^
    PMID 11950740
    .
  5. PMID 12143857
    .
  6. PMC 1420696. [Neurologist Leth Argos and a team...] at the University of Newcastle in Australia
    say that in severe cases motivational deficiency disorder can be fatal, because the condition reduces the motivation to breathe.
  7. PMID 16597180
    .
  8. S2CID 41710942
    .
  9. ISSN 1091-2339
    . Retrieved 2024-02-18.
  10. PMID 16597176
    .
  11. S2CID 4640632
    .
  12. ^ "www.guidelines.co.uk". Archived from the original on 2014-10-18.
  13. ^ "FDA Panel: Limit Testosterone Drug Use – WebMD".
  14. ^ Moynihan R, Henry D (eds). "A Collection of Articles on Disease Mongering". PLoS medicine, 2006. Archived from the original on 2006-09-01. Retrieved 2007-06-12.

Further reading

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Disease_mongering&oldid=1208851227"