Healthy Skepticism Library item: 7428

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: Journal Article

Blech J.
Time to resist the illness industry.
New Sci 2006 Jul 22-28; 191:(2561):24
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19125615.800-time-to-resist-the-illness-industry.html

Abstract:

A rising tide of “cures” for diseases people didn’t think they had is turning society into one big hospital. It’s time we reclaimed our health, says Jörg Blech
GOOD health is not what it used to be. The rites of passage of a normal life – birth, mood swings, sexuality, the ageing process and so on – are increasingly being redefined as pathological by pharmaceutical companies and medical associations. Illness is becoming an industrial product, and health a state that nobody can live up to any more.

One of the most striking examples of this is the “Sisi syndrome”, an alleged form of depression that came to light for the first time in 1998 in a one-page advertisement by SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline). According to the company, people with the syndrome – of whom there are said to be 3 million in Germany alone – characteristically hide their illness by pretending to be active and positive about life, while in reality they are depressed and might need treatment with psycho-pharmaceuticals. The syndrome is named after the 19th-century Austrian …