General
DEPRESCRIBING
A pillar of future professional and lay health education that incorporates disease-mongering awareness must deal with how to discontinue drugs when they are no longer wanted (ineffective, causing adverse reactions, interacting deleteriously with other drugs), […]
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH A MENTAL HEALTH SCREENING TOOL
I (K.W.) recently went to the gynecologist for my annual exam. The office gave me the usual paperwork, but this time I noticed something new — a checklist about my mental health. It asked, “Over […]
DISEASE-MONGERING MEETS THE MENINGITIS SCANDAL
The meningitis outbreak caused by contaminated medicine from a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy has become a full-fledged health scandal with its inevitable elements: avoidable deaths, journalistic outrage, competing investigations, finger-pointing, newly discovered conflicts of interest/incompetence/corruption, resignations, […]
NEW NORMALITIES
“Valium’s Contribution to the New Normal,” an opinion piece in the New York Times this week by longtime health writer Robin Marantz Henig, reviewed the public’s embrace of new expectations for mental equilibrium following the […]
“PATIENT” IS THE NEW BUZZWORD
Everyone seems to be talking about “patients” these days. It’s the word du jour. The drug industry says patients are their reason for being in business. National disease advocacy groups represent the voices of their […]
GENE MYTHS AT THE DISEASE-MONGERING FRONTIER
It’s obvious to many how Big Pharma contributes to overtreatment, overdiagnosis, misleading marketing (i.e., Disease-Mongering). But what about Big Biotech? Case in point: Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing. How about sex selection to achieve a “balanced family“? Have […]
PINTEREST – THE LATEST SOCIAL MEDIA TOOL BEING USED BY PHARMA
Why am I not surprised to see that pharma is increasingly using Pinterest, the social photo-sharing website to reach millions of monthly online visitors. Drug companies are marketers. Plain and simple. They are using all […]
