Selling Sickness

Ray Moynihan talked about the book he co-wrote with Alan Cassels, Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All into Patients, published by Nation Books. In the book he argued that the world’s biggest drug companies now target healthy people by reclassifying the problems of daily life as medical conditions. The author described how physicians are in the habit of prescribing drugs for problems that could be treated with an improved diet and exercise. Mr. Moynihan also asserted that billions of health care dollars are being spent on treating healthy, rich Americans as opposed to fighting the AIDS epidemic and treating the legitimately sick. At the event, Mr. Moynihan gave examples of the problem and some examples of attempts to disentangle the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry. He suggested that the central problem is the need for new structures for defining what is illness and what is health. He responded to questions from memb close