Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6640

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: book

Kawachi I, Conrad P.
Medicalization and the pharmacological treatment of blood pressure
New York: Oxford University Press 1996

Abstract:

This chapter examines how elevated blood pressure has become increasingly medicalized in the 20th century. In the case of blood pressure, the issue is defining a naturally occurring attribute as a medical problem. One of the consequences of therapeutic empiricism was the uncritical expansion of therapy to populations with mildly and moderately elevated blood pressure, even before rigorous proof of benefit was available in the form of randomized trials. This was assisted by the fact that the dividing line between normotension and hypertension is essentially arbitrary. The pharmaceutical industry contributed heavily to the medicalization of blood pressure through a massive investment in developing a wide array of drugs and in heavily advertising them. Lately, drug companies have been financing studies looking at the quality of life with various antihypertensives as a marketing tool.

Keywords:
*analysis/hypertension/ medicalization of problems/ drug company sponsored research/ quality of life claims/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: MEDICALIZATION OF PROBLEMS/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: RESEARCH/SPONSORSHIP: RESEARCH