Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All into Patients
Author: Ray Moynihan
Thirty years ago, the head of the drug company Merck made some remarkably candid comments about his distress that his company's market was limited to sick people. Suggesting he would like Merck to be more like the maker of Wrigley's chewing gum, the CEO said it had long been his dream to make drugs for healthy people, to "sell to everyone." That dream now drives the marketing machinery of the most profitable industry on earth. From award-winning Ray Moynihan,—one of the world's top medical journalists—Selling Sickness reveals how widening the boundaries of illness and lowering the threshold for treatments is creating millions of new patients and billions in new profits. This in turn is driving up personal drug bills and threatening to bankrupt national health systems all over the world. As more and more ordinary life is "medicalized," the industry moves ever closer to being able to "sell to everyone."
Publishers Weekly
This accessible study about the collusion between medical science and the drug industry emphasizes how drug companies market their products by either redefining problems as diseases (like female sexual dysfunction) or redefining a condition to encompass a greater percentage of the population. Moynihan, a health journalist for the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet, and Cassels, a Canadian science writer, note, for instance, that eight of the nine specialists who wrote the 2004 federal guideline on high cholesterol, which substantially increased the number of people in that category, have multiple financial ties to drug manufacturers. Physicians now routinely prescribe cholesterol-lowering pills (statins) that may have perilous side effects, when many people could lower their risk of heart attack with less costly and dangerous steps, such as exercise and improved diet. Through aggressive merchandising, funding of medical conferences and expensive perks, drug companies win doctors over to diagnosing these "diseases" and prescribing drugs for them. Unfortunately for these authors, much of this territory has been covered by several books in the past year, most notably Marcia Angell's The Truth About the Drug Companies (due out in paperback from Random House in September). (July) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
New interesting textbook: 388 Great Hairstyles or Smart Girls Do Dumbbells
Freedom from Fibromyalgia: The 5-Week Program Proven to Conquer Pain
Author: Nancy Selfridg
Free yourself from pain in just five weeks!
If you’re one of the millions of people who suffer from fibromyalgia, you’re all too familiar with the excruciating pain, overwhelming fatigue, and, in severe cases, total incapacitation that this disorder brings. Here at last, from a physician who specializes in treating fibromyalgia, is a clinically proven program that can free you from pain and other symptoms in as little as five weeks — without drugs, supplements, or special diets.
Freedom from Fibromyalgia presents Dr. Selfridge’s highly effective mind-body approach, organized in a step-by-step, week-by-week program anyone can follow:
* Week 1: Plan to heal
* Week 2: Show your brain and body who’s boss
* Week 3: Teach your brain and body to live with rage
* Week 4: Time to start feeling really good again
* Week 5: How to make freedom from fibromyalgia last
Filled with helpful examples and the voices of patients who have found freedom from fibromyalgia through Dr. Selfridge’s program, this book will put you on the path to lasting healing.
Library Journal
Physician Selfridge and self-help author Peterson are former fibromyalgia (FMS) patients who credit their recovery to a program based on the work of Dr. John Sarno (The MindBody Prescription). The authors believe "rogue" brain chemicals are the culprits behind the all-over body pain of FMS. Since there are no pills to combat these chemicals, the authors have developed a five-week, self-directed recovery program based upon mind-body principles. The book is divided into three parts: "Understanding Fibromyalgia," "Tools To Battle Fibromyalgia," and "The Five-Week Plan To Battle Fibromyalgia." The structured program the authors have developed focuses on meditation, journal writing, and self-talk aimed at creating a psychological awareness of the emotions, thoughts, and feelings that produce pain in the body. The chapter on meditation is too brief, but the authors suggest additional resources to supplement their information. The writing style is positive and easy to understand, the charts and worksheets are helpful, and the information is based upon sound principles of behavioral change. A "Notes" section serves as the book's references; a list of resources suggests books, web sites and Internet groups; and a list of tools for initiating the five-week program is provided. Recommended for all consumer collections. Lisa McCormick, Health Sciences Lib., Jewish Hosp., Cincinnati Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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