It is said that 57 percent of U.S. doctors receive drugmaker/industry funding and 66 percent of U.S. adults are now on prescription drugs. Any correlation?
Drug ads now cast such a wide “symptom net,” comedian Chris Rock said he expected to hear, “Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning? You might be suffering from ….”
Here are six ways drugmakers hijack U.S. medicine
Diagnosing. Once upon a time you had to go to the doctor for a medical diagnosis. But thanks to Pharma internet algorithms, you can find out the origin of that pain in your abdomen and its treatment on the online “symptom checkers” and disease “quizzes” that greet your every keystroke. (See: “You may be suffering from ….”) Self-diagnosis turns patients into drug reps– “Hey Doc, I have this disease [seen on TV] and I need this drug,” saving drugmakers millions in salaries. It has forced doctors to learn “refusal” skills to cope with self-diagnosing patients waving coupons. Why do so many diseases have catchy initials like GA, OAD, RA, EPI, GERD and COPD? Because they sell.
Selling sickness and fear. Ever since drugmakers saw they could drive drug sales by marketing disease, the U.S. medical system sanctifies sickness not health. Bristol Myers Squibb is currently running a “No Time To Wait” radio campaign to sell its atrial fibrillation drug by fanning stroke fears. Verona Pharma warns that your cough could be chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Astellas Pharma says you may go blind without its expensive and dangerous “GA” eye injection. Mental diseases are a bumper crop for drugmakers (christened “behavioral health” by Pharma) because they lack objective tests like scans and diagnoses can be swayed.
Screening and testing. You can’t sanctify sickness without widespread screening and testing to harness more patients–plus you have to pay for the machine! The screening test Cologuard, for example, succeeded in putting colon cancer risk on the map through aggressive marketing to doctors and consumers–until the Department of Justice (DOJ) slapped its manufacturer with kickback and fraudulent claim allegations. Oops. And there’s another problem with screening–insulting people’s intelligence! Is screening really necessary for depression or pain? Do drugmakers think we are that dumb?
Prescription “efficiency.” Drugmakers increasingly consider doctors a speed bump to prescription efficiency and drug sales and it gets worse: Independent pharmacies and industry watchers charge that drugmakers also seek the elimination of pharmacies altogether to monopolize drug dispensing through direct and home delivery. The crop of “pop-up” medical offices in strip malls and online “talk to a doctor now!” telehealth apps, connected to no recognizable medical group, suggest they are right. So does the travail of major drug store chains like CVS and Walgreens whose shelves look like “lost our lease” sales.
Front groups and victim medicine. Why do people want to have a health diagnosis? Identity? Self-importance? Sympathy? Melodrama? Life script? Almost every diagnosis today is attached to a weepy, drugmaker-funded “patient” group to pry more money out of insurers and payors and to disease “clubs.” The poster child for victim medicine is the WebMD-owned ADDitude magazine which has a prescription “solution” for ADHD, autism, depression, bipolar disorders, “neurodivergence,” 14 other so-called mental conditions and everyday conditions like menopause, PMS, harried motherhood and difficulty in finishing your homework.
Clinical trials as news. Clinical drug trials are expensive and generally funded by drugmakers (or government agencies “partnering” with drugmakers). Once upon a time, medical journals hesitated to publish clinical trial findings for two reasons: Results were preliminary, speculative and deduced (surrogate endpoints) and drugmakers have a vested interest in conveying positive results, even burying negative ones. Today medical journals shamelessly publish drugmaker-funded clinical trials as “research” and news outlets obediently pick up the published material, legitimizing it as “news.” After all, it was in the medical journals.
Martha Rosenberg is a health reporter and the author of Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Lies and Born With a Junk Food Deficiency.
