6 tricks that pharmaceutical marketers use/Martha Rosenberg (II)

4. Fear that your child is not normal. ADHD is not the only way drug marketers have medicalized and monetized childhood. Temper tantrums are now called “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.”

 Thanks to “pediatric psychopharmacology” children are increasingly diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorders, mixed manias, social phobias, bipolar disorders, conduct disorders, depression and “spectrum” disorders. Children are compliant patients who have no choice but to do what they parents, teachers and doctors tell them. Worse, they stay on the drugs for decades with no way of knowing if they need they them now — or ever needed them. 

5. Fear that your drug isn’t working. Adding a second drug to a first one maximizes revenue. But is it ethical? If a first drug is not working why take it? Maybe you never needed it. In past years, campaigns told people to add Abilify or Seroquel to their antidepressant to make it work better. Industry-funded doctors simultaneously reclassified depression as a life-long and even progressive condition — though it was considered neither before expensive drugs to treat it emerged. Having a progressive condition that is not being treated increases the “fear” sell of course. 

6. Fear of silent diseases. According to drug ads, just because you have no symptoms doesn’t mean you aren’t suffering from silent conditions. You might be “at risk “ of bone loss said ads for anti-osteoporosis drugs like Fosamax, Boniva and Prolia (once the money in hormone replacement ran out).

No pill in the history of the world has been as successful as the statin Lipitor with its “Know Your Numbers” TV ad campaign. Yet dietary cholesterol as a strong risk factor in heart disease has recently been questioned. And the ads don’t mention diet and exercise. 

Such fear tactics to sell drugs are everywhere and why it is said that the healthiest people are those who do not watch TV drug ads.  

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6 tricks that pharmaceutical marketers use (I)