#552 Selling Sickness

Last year the pharmaceutical industry spent over $4 billion advertising drugs to consumers. Drug companies maintain that this educates people about serious health problems like acid reflux, overactive bladder or erectile dysfunction. Is this effort turning us into a nation of patients, popping a pill for every ill? We’ll talk with Australian journalist Ray Moynihan about how this issue plays out around the world. We will explore the new field of “evidence-based medicine” as an alternative to advertising-driven prescribing. Guest: Ray Moynihan, journalist, visiting editor and contributor, British Medical Journal. Co-author, with Alan Cassels: Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All into Patients (Nation Books).