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Ray Moynihan

Alan Cassels

Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients Paperback – June 23, 2006

by Ray Moynihan (Author), Alan Cassels (Author)

153 ratings

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Thirty years ago, the head of the drug company Merck made some remarkably candid comments about his distress that his company's market was limited to sick people. Suggesting he would like Merck to be more like the maker of Wrigley's chewing gum, the CEO said it had long been his dream to make drugs for healthy people, to "sell to everyone." That dream now drives the marketing machinery of the most profitable industry on earth. From award-winning Ray Moynihan, -- one of the world's top medical journalists -- Selling Sickness reveals how widening the boundaries of illness and lowering the threshold for treatments is creating millions of new patients and billions in new profits. This in turn is driving up personal drug bills and threatening to bankrupt national health systems all over the world. As more and more ordinary life is "medicalized," the industry moves ever closer to being able to "sell to everyone."

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Bold Type Books
Publication date

June 23, 2006
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.69 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

9781560258568
ISBN-13

978-1560258568
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels examine how the drug industry has transformed the way we think about physical and mental health and turned more and more of us each year into customers."

About the Author

Ray Moynihan is one of the world's leading health writers. His work has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Australian Financial Review, the British Medical Journal, Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine.

Alan Cassels is a Canadian researcher and writer who works on drug policy issues.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 156025856X
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bold Type Books; 1st edition (June 23, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781560258568
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1560258568
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.69 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #208,964 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #43 in Manufacturing Industry (Books)
- #45 in Industrial Relations Business
- #307 in Advertising (Books)

Customer Reviews:
153 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		73%
4 star		17%
3 star		5%
2 star		2%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Jacq S

Even though the book is from 2004, it is ...

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2017

Verified Purchase

Even though the book is from 2004, it is still relevant. Reading the book is upsetting, how money is involved in every aspect of being sick and made to think we are sick. I was reading the book while on TV was a commercial of the latest new medication that we need to ask our doctor about! Going to a hematologist and they need to know when my last bone density test was. We are made sick for money. There are now many rules and regulations in place to 'curb the selling that makes us feel sick', but the pharmaceutical industry is still influencing doctors and the public.
Eye opening book, especially if you take the medicine(s) he's talking about.

18 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kenman

Protect yourself against American Pharma: read the book

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2014

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High blood pressure, high cholesterol, pre-menstrual syndrome, ADD/ADHD, pre-diabetes, depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, hormone replacement and other "diseases" are shown in the book to be "symptoms, not diseases." So how did they get to be diseases and produce billions of dollars in drug sales to treat them? Marketing, misconceptions, mis-information, "buying doctors", outright lies and even conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies throughout the world have led to the unsuspecting public taking billions of pills that don't help us and may even harm us.

How does that happen? Doctors, medical schools, clinical journals and even the FDA employees are all dependent on pharmaceutical company dollars and that leads to journal articles that are "ghost-written" by pharma employees, sent to physicians who "assume" that they are true and disseminated by pharma reps whose considerable income and continued employment depend on convincing doctors to write more of their product. What about Congress? Also on the payroll.

I spent 37 years in pharmaceuticals. I'm not proud of everything I did before I realized that we were being fed a bunch of crap by our management and executive teams, but I wish I had written this book. A little dated (2005) but still valid and well written.

The manager who hired me with Pfizer in 1974 gave me a final piece of advice before sending me out to sell - "always remember, drugs are made to be sold, not taken." A very wise man.

Spend the money, read the book and next time you go to your doctor you'll be better armed to ask questions, evaluate his advice and discover whether he/she's the doctor you want to trust your life to.

I hope that Moynihan and Cassels are working on an update with information on the other drugs that have come out since the original publication. I'll buy it.

44 people found this helpful

Helpful

BlueSkyHigh

I've been affected by horrible, life threatening reactions to blood pressure medications

Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2015

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Everyone needs to read this, if you go to a doctor. Just today, (6/5/15) a news story broke about Viagra suspected of causing melanoma. (cancer), and stated that the drug company knew it all along. *But, personally, I've been affected by horrible, life threatening reactions to blood pressure medications, and one other .. Now, I am more and more looking into Holistic Medicine. I don't trust the BIG pharms, and after you read this book, you will be VERY , VERY careful ... or abstain, if you possibly can. There are holistic treatments for nearly EVERYTHING! These practitioners know the natural cures, that will not make you sick.

This book has a lot to say that is crucial to the consumer, and those who will 'become' consumers, and therefore PATIENTS.

Big Pharma: It's a big busine$$, very unconcerned with our GOOD HEALTH.

*That's why I bought this very informative book.

24 people found this helpful

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Gert Bo Thorgersen

The book warns us about how the medical firms among other invent new sicknesses just for selling more drugs.

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2016

Verified Purchase

By reading the book we again see how the Food and Drug Administration, (FDA), is too close connected to the medical firms, from whom yearly half of the money is received, which without doubt results in the fast greenlighting the new drugs, and this mostly done just after only the produces have declared how safe and good and safe their drugs are.

And besides with the drugs faster being allowed in USA than in Europe, we at cases with drugs turning out resulting in bad side problems, and even persons dying, it now for FDA have rotated 180 degrees, so that in Europe fast being removed from the marked, while by FDA even taken up to 1 ½ year before banned in USA.

So again it looks like too close a connection between FDA and the medical firms. But strangely it also shows up that nearly all of the “experts” who to FDA greenlight the drugs actually nearly all of them also are working for, paid by, the firms; which strangely they often try to deny.

And in cases we see how the firms for selling more drugs, then by rotating the research results get them to look much better, for example, when advertising that a drug reduces the risk of hip fracture by 50%. But actually by the research the firm only used women at high risk, and of these 100 were on the drug while 100 on placebo, and during the period 1 in the drug group had a hip fracture while 2 in the placebo group. So 1% in the drug group and 2% in the placebo group hit by the sickness. But of cause 1 to 2 = 50%, so of cause telling only 50% so big chance when using the drug, and strangely forgetting to tell research only was made on high risk women.

To me the book is missing in some of the chapters to tell which natural vitamins, minerals, or herbs, the patient could use instead of the actual drugs, and thereby in many cases getting much better results, and nearly without any side problems. As in the case concerning risk of hip fracture, where we more and more realize the missing of calcium, magnesium, sunshine (vitamin D2), and vitamin K2, causes the problem.

As the book is printed in 2005, we concerning some of the cases since then, in the news, have read about much more problems. Or concerning the cholesterol we now know that we nearly have none connections between cholesterol and heart attack. But even the book is printed 11 years ago, it still is good by warning us about not blindly to trust FDA or the drug producers.

5 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Incognito Cassis

A GOOD DEBATE FOR ALL OF US

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 29, 2015

Verified Purchase

Sickness is a industry that in the hands of the present pharmaceuticals who are a business see only ill health as business and not as a healing Industry. The Drugs companies globally have made us puppets and they the masters of our health by controlling our health and demise of life under false techniques of pseudo science and standards of what is adequate to ensure assurance of PROFIT ONLY. They the pharmaceutical companies have DONE MORE HARM Globally to US ALL. This book is well researched and will make you ask questions IS IT SAFE FOR ME TO GO TO A DOCTOR? HAS A RISK ASSESSMENT DONE BY AN UNBIASED ORGANISATION TO ENSURE THE INFORMATION SUPPLIED IS ADEQUATE FOR MY HEALTH AND HEALING. A GOOD DEBATE FOR ALL OF US...HOW SAFE ARE WE ALL REALLY IN THE HANDS OF THE DRUG COMPANIES?...TIME TO EXECUTE THE HANDS THAT FEED THE PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS COMPANIES.

4 people found this helpful

Luisa Hernández

You can do that better than anyone

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 11, 2014

Verified Purchase

This book was a bit of an eye-opener. Pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in keeping us dependent on pills. Doctors don't have time to treat the whole person. If there's a magic pill, then that's what's given to patients. Always read the side effects before you go onto any medication long-term and do your own research. Your doctor doesn't have the time to research "your" case. You can do that better than anyone. There are occasions where there is no alternative, but evidence from this book suggests that there are so many more where there is a healthier alternative than the prescribed medication.

3 people found this helpful

jon

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 21, 2018

Verified Purchase

interesting

Dalia Cerneviciute

Real face of modern medicine

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2014

Verified Purchase

Modern medicine with pharmacy companies want to make everyone in the world patient for ever to profit from sickness. People should trust more in themselves but not believe in those who make people patients but not to heal them.

3 people found this helpful

Janett King

Good buy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 26, 2014

Verified Purchase

Very interesting book

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