EVIDENCE-based medicine has started to make a real impact in the past decade. Yet as we move towards more rational treatment in some areas, in others there is a trend in the opposite direction. Every year diseases new to science emerge – complete with the drugs to treat them. These are products of disease mongering.
It has long been a tactic of pharmaceutical companies to try to increase the number of people who can be prescribed their drugs. They argue for symptoms that are a little out of the ordinary, such as elevated blood pressure, to be redefined as diseases. They…
