WE ARE ALL SICK Chicago Sun-Times

WE ARE ALL SICK Chicago Sun-Times : "The idea that drug companies help to create new illnesses may sound strange to many of us, but it is all too familiar to industry insiders. A recent Reuters Business Insight report designed for drug company executives argued that the ability to 'create new disease markets' is bringing untold billions in soaring drug sales.' One of the chief selling strategies, said the report, is to change the way people think about their common ailments, to make 'natural processes' into medical conditions. People must be able to be 'convinced' that 'problems they may previously have accepted as, perhaps, merely an inconvenience' -- like baldness, wrinkles and sexual difficulties -- are now seen as 'worthy of medical intervention.' Celebrating the development of profitable new disease markets like 'Female Sexual Dysfunction,' the report was upbeat about the financial future for the drug industry. 'The coming years will bear greater witness to the corporate-sponsored creation of disease.'"