Source:

Dr Carl Elliot

CNN, 11th October 2010


If you want to understand the way prescription drugs are marketed today, have a look at the 1928 book, "Propaganda," by Edward Bernays, the father of public relations in America.


For Bernays, the public relations business was less about selling things than about creating the conditions for things to sell themselves. When Bernays was working as a salesman for Mozart pianos, for example, he did not simply place advertisements for pianos in newspapers. That would have been too obvious.


Instead, Bernays persuaded reporters to write about a new trend: Sophisticated people were putting aside a special room in the home for playing music. Once a person had a music room, Bernays believed, he would naturally think of buying a piano. As Bernays wrote, "It will come to him as his own idea."


Just as Bernays sold pianos by selling the music room, pharmaceutical marketers now sell drugs by selling the diseases that they treat. The buzzword is "disease branding."


To brand a disease is to shape its public perception in order to make it more palatable to potential patients. Panic disorder, reflux disease, erectile dysfunction, restless legs syndrome, bipolar disorder, overactive bladder, ADHD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, even clinical depression: All these conditions were once regarded as rare until a marketing campaign transformed the brand.


Once a branded disease has achieved a degree of cultural legitimacy, there is no need to convince anyone that a drug to treat it is necessary. It will come to him as his own idea.

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ANH Comment


Large corporations seem to sink to ever decreasing depths when it comes to making a buck.  There's a fine line between advertising propaganda and public manipulation when you're selling kettles or pianos, but when the merchandise are amongst the most dangerous products we consume, it's downright criminal.  It's also worth looking at the use of 'disease branding' in light of the stringent and draconian health claim legislation in Europe, which is in the process of being imposed on the food (and hence food supplement) sector.  We now find ourselves in a world where, in Europe for example, you can't make a beneficial health claim for probiotics (like those in live yoghurt), but you can create a designer disease, target a vulnerable population and sell a drug without divulging the more sinister side effects.


And Dr Robert Verkerk adds, "It's a sad state of affairs that Dr Carl Elliott's book convincingly provides proof that the drug companies have no interest in helping people to get healthy and are simply motivated by profit—at any cost.  The case of Paxil says it all.  Here's a drug in which a new condition, social anxiety disorder, was created to prey on people's shyness - something our society, rather than a drug should be able to assist people with.  The price of this was unpredictable and suicidal behaviours in young people who thought they'd found their magic bullet.  It cost the UK maker of the drug, GlaxoSmithKline, a cool 8 million dollars following their exposure via a US court".  


The plethora of health information on the internet added to an increasing number of people feeling isolated in western society makes its easier to market a panacea for what ails.  It's sad that may of these so-called 'branded diseases' are often more a reflection of our loss of community than our loss of health.  Many readers who are also advocates of natural health approaches will be dismayed to hear that there are so many in our society that lack the information and support to be able to make natural health choices.  Faced with the challenges of their condition and with seemingly nowhere else to go they become victims of the voracious appetite of Big Pharma.


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