For Every Pill, They Invent Another Ill

by Mary Wakefield

On Monday I read a new book, Selling Sickness, by an American journalist called Ray Moynihan, and am determined never to be so naive again. Drug companies, it turns out, are not on our side at all. They're misanthropic on an epic, Bond-villain scale. Instead of looking for ways to defeat illnesses, they spend their time trying to create them. Instead of selling cures to the relatively small pool of sick people, they find it more profitable to convince healthy folk that they are unwell. It's creepy and, in a sick way, it's also rather brilliant.

Here's a textbook example of how the disease-mongering works, courtesy of GlaxoSmith Kline. A few years ago, GSK needed to file a new application for one of its anti-depressants, Paxil, in order to extend the patent. What to do? Easy - invent an ailment for it to cure.

They found a brief mention of a little-known nervous condition - Social Anxiety Disorder - in a psychiatric journal somewhere, and hired a PR firm to turn it into a star. The symptoms of SAD - feeling nervous, sweaty, shy at parties - don't amount to much more than the symptoms of being alive, but it was marketed with a serious ad campaign and a catch-phrase: "Imagine being allergic to people."

The PR company rounded up patients, experts, a celebrity sufferer and then presented the SAD story to the press. A new disease? With a famous name? How could an editor could turn it down. The New York Times ran a long, serious feature and American Vogue followed suit.

Instantly, of course, thousands of people decided that they suffered from SAD. Doctors prescribed Paxil, GSK thrived and the PR company won an award for "Best PR Programme of the year".

All week I've been rootling around on the internet, finding out about disease-mongering, and from what I can gather it's a growing, multi-billion-dollar business across America and Europe. Drug companies invent and publicise new "lifestyle disorders" every day, and the public obligingly develop the symptoms and pop the pills.

As all hypochondriacs and pharmaceutical companies know, you only have to read a list of unpleasant symptoms to begin to suffer from them. It's the reverse placebo effect. Once a big drug company has wheedled a disease into the papers, they've as good as sold the cure.