Experts Slam Disease Mongering
Combating "disease mongering" will require a multi-pronged approach that includes existing patient groups refusing pharmaceutical company funding and more awareness and vigilance from journal editors and the media to ensure that bogus or exaggerated studies are more carefully vetted.
Experts from around the world Monday called on the global health community to challenge what they see as a trend of pharmaceutical companies blurring the boundaries of legitimate illness and normal conditions in an attempt to increase sales of their products.
The trend, which is dubbed "disease mongering" by the experts, "turns healthy people into patients, wastes precious resources, and causes iatrogenic harm," David Henry, a professor of clinical pharmacology at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia, and Ray Moynihan, a journalist and conjoint lecturer at the university wrote in a commentary in PLoS Medicine.
