Written on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 11:52pm by Christopher Smith | 7 Comments

Medicalization and Everything That's Wrong With America

During the Bush era, it was de rigueur to say that terrorists, muslims and other assorted brown people around the world “hated us for our freedom”.  And by “freedom”, the right wing meant love of Jesus, guns and the parts of the constitution they liked…in that order.

Do you know why “they” really hate us?  It’s because of shit like this.

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And when I say “they”, I don’t just mean terrorists, I mean the entire fucking world.  Seriously, can we create some more “diseases” or “illnesses” that we can treat with bullshit prescription drugs?  Is it even possible?  Each time that I think we’ve hit the limit of what Americans will believe is an actual disorder or disease, a pharmaceutical company takes it to another level.  Welcome to the world of medicalization, spoon fed to the mouthbreathing American populace as they watch Survivor.

Medicalization is not the easiest word to understand, he said, but it is the best one to explain so far “a juggernaut which no one seems able to stop.”

Behind that juggernaut is a culture-accelerating blend of medicine, marketing, and perceived need that Allan Brandt called “inexorable” and culturally pervasive. (Brandt, who helped introduce the event, is Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.)

“Before you sell a drug,” said Lane — skeptical of a well-oiled U.S. medicalization machine, “you have to sell an illness.”

Now, I’m not gonna go all Penn Jillette on you here, but come on folks, wake up.  Don’t ask your Doctor about your chronic eyelash undergrowth or your Restess Legs.  Stop being an automaton.  This is a microcosm of how we have handed over control to corporate interests and how we generally swallow marketing content as serious consultative advice.  We are slaves to things we own and want.  How do we fix it?

A step in the right direction would be a ban on direct to consumer advertising for drugs…However, I don’t think we’ll see any elected official try and fuck with the pharmaceutical lobby on this.  Example #1,431 as to why your Government no longer belongs to you.  Maybe we should take it back.

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7 Comments

  1. Labgrrl says:
    June 23, 2009 at 2:05 am

    At the risk of sounding like a jerk who is playing devil’s advocate, this drug (previously called Lumigan) was a great thing for several cancer patients I’ve met through my work at RPCI.

    Not having eyelashes sucks big time. Ever get something caught in your eye? Now imagine it 10 times a day…. yeah. not a small problem.

    The problem is not the medicalization of these things, but the marketing of them as cosmetic panaceas… hell, the marketing of them at all. It degrades people with an actual real condition, making them the same as people who want a drug from stupid cosmetic reasons.

    And in this, I speak from experience, having had an insurance company deny me botox once for a tremor because botox was “cosmetic.”

    The chicka I met who hadn’t slept more than two consecutive hours in years and was saved by a restless leg drug, and the other who went back to work after 3 years on disability after being prescribed a drug now used for Fibromyalgia are enough to convince me that these drugs work for actual real conditions, but the marketing of them is designed to ensnare people who no real doctor would ever recommend them to… because if a drug isn’t being sold to at least 1% of the populace, it isn’t making the company money…

    So half of what we do in pharma is find stupid money making uses for drugs being used for other crap… So the glaucoma drop that gave Mary full eyelashes after chemo becomes the latest cosmetic crap treatment…

    It doesn’t make poor Mary’s experience less traumatic…

    But, heck yeah, if you’ve stopped sleeping because your legs are doing the rhumba in the night, or you almost go blind because you’re always getting crap in your eyes, by all means talk to your fricking doctor. But don’t diagnose yourself based on TV.

  2. Chris Smith says:
    June 23, 2009 at 9:14 am

    I’m sure that the millions of people who are prescribed these drugs are undoubtedly advocates for them. Why wouldn’t they be? So you think that someone who has convinced themselves that they have RLS would all of a sudden tell you that they think the drug was pointless? Wouldn’t that imply that they don’t really have a made up “disorder”? It’s probably just a coincidence that almost every study about RLS has been funded by the pharmaceutical company which has a patent on the drug to treat it.

    Also, the lash drug was originally intended for glaucoma treatment until the company found that a side effect of the drug was eyelash growth, which kicked the marketing department into high gear so they could maximize profits through direct to consumer advertising with an eyelash disorder.

    Of course, the pharmaceutical companies, who spend nearly twice on promotion than they do on R&D and have been accused of ghost writing journal articles, bribing doctors with straight cash, trips and other benefits as well as incentive programs rewarding doctors who frequently prescribe their medications. There is an entire industry dedicated to making you think you have an illness or disorder which can be treated if you talk to your Dcotor about the prescription for it.

    http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050001

    Damn, I feel like John Stossel all of a sudden…it’s not a good feeling.

  3. Ethan Cox says:
    June 23, 2009 at 2:01 pm

    On the plus side, Soupy’s pimpin’ for hyperhydrosis did provide some entertainment in the local medicalization market for a season or so.

    I should add that besides all the “ask your doc” crap, there’s also the even more destructive side of this, which is kids. ADHD… Autistic Spectrum disorder… and it doesn’t end with faux-psychiatric diagnoses; they wanted to put my 2-year old on Prevacid! (as though perhaps some common sense and diet changes might not suffice to reduce his reflux, the diagnosis of which itself seemed a bit sketchy to me). But what parent doesn’t want the best for their kid? It’s easy to peddle fear to parents.

    Americans want a pill for everything, including happiness, but decriminalize pot? Oh No!

  4. Mike In WNY says:
    June 23, 2009 at 2:34 pm

    I thought restless leg syndrome is what Jack Kemp and other NFL quarterbacks suffered from – aka happy feet.

    I understand your disgust with some of the drug advertising, but isn’t it the responsibility of consumers to know what they are buying? Caveat emptor, n’est pas?

  5. Brian Castner says:
    June 23, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    I have to admit, I thought RLS was bullshit when I was diagnosed with it during a sleep study. Then I had my knee reconstructed, and woke up every 5 minutes in shooting pain because my legs twitch all night. Who knew?

    That being said, I agree with your overall assessment. The hijacking of useful drugs for profit to the masses is annoying. I would feel better about it if drug companies spent as much on research as they do on advertising.

    But embrace your inner right-wing Stossel – its good for you. Before you know it, you’ll be for personal responsibility and against government fixing all your problems.

  6. Larry Castellani says:
    June 23, 2009 at 8:08 pm

    The pharmaceutical corps and their advertisers are selling you more than a disease and a drug to cure it; they are selling the consciousness that believes it needs drugs to be healthy and that sees many differences and variations as likely abnormalities or sicknesses. …. We can only argue that it’s the consumers’ responsibility to buy this sales pitch if we had a population of consumers who were sufficiently educated and psychologically healthy to be able to distance themselves objectively and critically from the onslaught of brainwashing on TV, in the schools, by the doctors themselves and by a culture which is basically unhealthy if not essentially pathological. That is, the people have to already be responsible and that is being conditioned out of them.

  7. STEEL says:
    June 26, 2009 at 11:30 pm

    Imagine the health care cost savings if we could get rid of the ridiculous drug advertisements. One thing though its not just the big drug lobby that would fight this. TV media would most certainly throw down the gauntlet just as hard. It seems like at least 1/3 of the adds on TV are for drugs. That would be a huge cash flow loss to them.