Seven Diseases Big Pharma Hopes You Get in 2012

'It used to be joked that a consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you what time it is. These days, the opportunist is Big Pharma, which raises your insurance premiums and taxes while providing you "low-priced" drugs that you paid for.

How did Pharma get a good third of the United States taking antidepressants, statins, and Purple Pills, albeit at low prices? By selling the diseases of depression, high cholesterol, and gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD. Supply-driven marketing, also known as "Have Drug - Need Disease and Patients," not only turns the nation into pill-popping hypochondriacs, it distracts from Pharma's drought of real drugs for real medical problems.

Of course, not all diseases are Wall Street pleasers. To be a true blockbuster disease, a condition must (1) really exist but have huge diagnostic "wiggle room" and no clear-cut test, (2) be potentially serious with "silent symptoms" said to "only get worse" if untreated, (3) be "underrecognized," "underreported" with "barriers" to treatment, (4) explain hitherto vague health problems a patient has had, (5) have a catchy name - ED, ADHD, RLS, Low T or IBS - and instant medical identity, and (6) need an expensive new drug that has no generic equivalent.

Here are some potential blockbuster diseases Pharma hopes you get in 2012.'


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Peddling Paranoia

Image Courtesy: www.adbusters.org




Selling cures for imaginary diseases is where the drug industry really rakes in the cash, argues Alan Cassels. Real need barely enters the picture.

'To create ‘new’ diseases Berman says drug companies hire public relations agencies and work with academics. ‘You find a professor working in a university and fund that professor to write a book, or to do a media tour around the country. Or you find a public figure, a sports figure or an actor, to go around and meet and work with journalists, and to do work with public forums, so you literally create this need.’ '


'Many people still believe that medicine is a noble pursuit, dedicated to curing humankind’s ills. But the reality is that ‘cure’ is passé. According to Alex Hittle, a biotech analyst at AG Edwards in St Louis: ‘We sometimes joke that when you’re doing a clinical trial, there are two possible disasters. The first disaster is if you kill people. The second disaster is if you cure them. The truly good drugs are the ones you can use chronically for a long, long time.’ '

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