The UK Guardian reports on a special issue of PloS Medicine (an online peer-reviewed journal) on “disease mongering” – the practice of pharmaceutical companies’ deliberately increasing fear over – or in cases entirely inventing – diseases to increase public demand for drugs that, conveniently, can only be provided by the pharma companies that created that fear in the first place. Like “halitosis” – the imaginary “disease” of bad breath, invented by Listerine and now standard medical terminology – pharmas have created or exploited ambiguous medical terms like “mild cognitive impairment” (to expand the range of uses for medications for Alzheimer disease), “female sexual dysfunction” (to justify prescribing Viagra for women), “erectile dysfunction” (redefined from true organic impotence to any degree of dissatisfaction with erection, to expand the market for Viagra to include all men regardless of health status), and “restless leg syndrome” (vague feelings in the legs, which supposedly are symptomatic of a neurological condition). They have also actively worked to redefine or blur the definitions of recognized conditions so as to justify diagnosing them in more patients, thus increasing the potential market for their products, and have publicly advertised their products for conditions which affect small proportions of the population in order to create demand for medication for conditions – especially ones affecting children – that the public fears but does not understand, such as ADHD (by publicizing controversial treatments to parents and teachers) and bipolar disorder (through advertising literally intended to convince women that they are crazier than they or their psychiatrists believe).

More and more, “educational” advertising is intended to convince consumers they are sick, not to alert them to treatments if they are sick.

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