Ray Moynihan, an award winning medical writer and Alan Cassels, a drug policy researcher at the University of Victoria in British Colombia have written a provocative book entitled Selling Sickness. The book focuses on America’s growing reliance on “lifestyle” drugs.
The authors argue that pharmaceutical companies try to medicalize our lives, then work to convince us that its products are the only cure. Moynihan and Cassels go further to say we drug ourselves to treat problems that may not even be real diseases.
On the other hand when medications do have proven benefits, pharmaceutical companies often exaggerate a products’ usefulness to encompass the widest possible group of patients. One such example according to Selling Sickness highlights the widespread marketing of cholesterol lowering drugs to healthy women.
The problems however aren’t necessarily the drugs themselves. It’s the hyperactive way they are promoted, the way consumers clamor for them and the way too many doctors and patients believe there is a pill for every ailment.
Turns out there is no simple solution but there are some things to do for your own protection. Ask these tough questions before accepting a prescription.
1. Exactly what condition is this supposed to treat?
2. Are there non-drug approaches (such as exercise, diet, chiropractic, massage ,yoga, herbs,) that I can do first?
3. Has this medication been proven useful in patients like me (that is people who are my age ,my sex ,my level of health)?
If your medical doctor doesn’t have the answer to these questions, go to consumer friendly, impartial websites like crbestbuydrugs.org or medicalletter.org. You can take back control over the prescription you use so the benefit is in your hands not the drug company’s profits.
