Promoting diseases to promote drugs -- the role of pharmaceutical
industry in fostering good and bad medicalization
Abstract
Pharmaceutical industry and drugs advertisement is sometimes accused of
“creating diseases”. This article assesses and describes the role of
that industry in fostering medicalization. First, the notions of
medicalization and pharmaceuticalization are defined. Then, the problem
of distinguishing between harmful overmedicalization and well-founded
medicalization is presented. Next, the phenomenon of disease mongering
is explained and illustrated by the case analysis of medicalizing pain
and suffering in three contexts: 1) the general idea of medicalizing
physical pain, 2) the medicalization of grief, and 3) disease mongering
of pseudoaddiction - a condition promoted in order to increase the
demand for opioid pain relievers.