Proponents of this practice argue that the pharmaceutical industry is only providing the public with information about its options and that actual prescription is a matter to be discussed between patient and doctor. Opponents, however, claim that this approach leads to the unnecessary prescription of drugs, that its motivation is only to profit the drug companies, and that it may actually harm instead of help patients.
A 2006 Newcastle, New South Wales conference, reported in PLoS Medicine, explored the phenomenon further Journalist Ray Moynihan satirised it in a BMJ "news" item that appeared in its April Fool's Day edition 2006, titled "Scientists find new disease: motivational deficiency disorder".
See also
References
Further reading
- Peter Conrad: The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2007
- Payer, Lynn (1992). Disease-Mongers. New York: John Wiley.
- Moynihan, Ray; Alan Cassels (2005). Selling sickness: How the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies are turning us all into patients. New York: Nation Books.
External links
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Last updated on Thursday July 10, 2008 at 20:54:53 PDT (GMT -0700)
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