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Drug makers selling sickness
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Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | First, you market the disease… then you push the pills to treat it

According to this article, drug makers often sell the disease - even if the disease is extremely rare, or its existence is very controversial - to convince people that they have the disease, in order to drive up sales of the cure.

More proof, if you needed it, that the private medical system is not efficient. This is a horrible waste of resources, resources that could be used better elsewhere.

The market, it seems, is not all that good at allocating health care, but the market cares only about profits, not about people.

SmithKline’s first forays into the anxiety market involved two fairly well-known illnesses - panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Then, in 1998, the company applied for FDA approval to market Paxil for something called social phobia or “social anxiety disorder” (SAD), a debilitating form of shyness the DSM characterized as “extremely rare”.

Obtaining such a new approval is a relatively simple affair. The FDA considers a DSM notation sufficient proof that a disease actually exists and, unlike new drugs, existing pharmaceuticals don’t require an exhaustive round of clinical studies. To show that a drug works in treating a new disease, the FDA often accepts in-house corporate studies.

With FDA approval for Paxil’s new use virtually guaranteed, SmithKline turned to the task of promoting the disease itself. To “position social anxiety disorder as a severe condition”, as the trade journal PR News put it, the company retained the New York-based public-relations firm Cohn & Wolfe. (Representatives of GlaxoSmithKline and Cohn & Wolfe did not return my phone calls.)

By early 1999 the firm had created a slogan, “Imagine Being Allergic to People”, and wallpapered bus shelters nationwide with pictures of a dejected-looking man vacantly playing with a teacup. “You blush, sweat, shake-even find it hard to breathe,” read the copy. “That’s what social anxiety disorder feels like.” The posters made no reference to Paxil or SmithKline; instead, they bore the insignia of a group called the social anxiety disorder coalition and its three non-profit members, the American psychiatric association, the anxiety disorders association of America, and freedom from fear.

But the coalition was not a grassroots alliance of patients in search of a cure. It had been cobbled together by SmithKline Beecham and Cohn & Wolfe handled all media inquiries on behalf of the group.

August 1st, 2002 General | one comment