Industry's "hypochondria sell," of course, is the basis of Ask Your Doctor advertising but it also fuels the health "news" you hear.
Drugmakers fund medical schools, medical centers, medical journals, medical practices, drugstores, telehealth and new offices in strip malls designed to sell drugs.
The "exciting" news you hear about a drug from a clinical trial is bought and paid for by the drugmaker behind the study and repeated verbatim by news outlets and medical journals.
So are new "diseases" which either sport expensive drugs, screening or both. Industry knows people like the identity and attention they get from being health victims. Ka-ching
Exhibit A is this week's elevation of near sightedness--myopia--to a "disease." Other diseases "sold" by industry include GERD, IBS, Low T, RA, neurordivergence, perimenopause, osteopenia, dry eye, obesity, GA, narcolepsy, EPI, OAB and many more.
Only 4.6% of the US population has an autoimmune disease but ads for injected biologics to treat the conditions (like Skyrizi which made $17.562 billion last year) are a case in point. The drugs are so lucrative who cares if the diseases are hyped? (Who even knows the drugs are from cell lines made in genetically modified Chinese hamster ovaries--CHO--an unreported t$400 billion industry?)
Exploiting Women's Health for Money
When hormones for menopause (HRT) were found to increase the risk of breast cancer by 26 percent, heart attacks by 29 percent, stroke by 41 percent and to double the risk of blood clots, millions of women quit the reliable and lucrative franchise There were unprecedented breast cancer rate drops according to medical authorities.
But once people had forgotten the scourge, Pharma remarketed the drugs--calling it "sexism" to ignore women's "symptoms" (instead of giving them drugs that caused cancer and heart attacks?) Who "re-analyzed" the original risks to find that hormones for menopause were safe after all? Pharma of course.
News about fetal harm from antidepressants and Lindsay Clancy coverage have provoked a similar industry panic; we now see hyping over maternal depression.
If women should--gulp--stop taking their prescriptions, industry would lose its lucrative maternal drug franchise. Biogen made $195.1 million last year, after all, from its new postpartum depression--the list price of its drug being$15,900 for a single 14-day treatment course.
The need to screen for and treat prenatal and postpartum maternal mental health is urgent writes Michelle Levander, a founding director of the Center for Health Journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Journalism. In 2024, the Center took money from Eli Lilly and Company and representatives from Merck & Co sit on its advisory board.
The Center is hardly alone in sending "health" messages and even "Woke" messages on behalf of Big Pharma. STAT News and the industry huckstering site Fierce Pharma spin similar insidious messages as industry hijacks health information.
Are you sick? Health corporations hope so.
(Article changed on Sep 27, 2026 at 5:30 PM EDT)
(Article changed on Sep 27, 2026 at 6:37 PM EDT)
