Health Library

A June 30, 2005 report from the Seattle Times highlights that a large portion of doctors’ diagnoses may be influenced by large drug companies seeking to improve their bottom line. The exposé, authored by Susan Kelleher and Duff Wilson, points out that many diagnostic criteria have been changed to classify more healthy people as sick, thus increasing medication sales.

The article notes that researchers at Dartmouth Medical School estimate that, during the 1990s, tens of millions more Americans were classified as having hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, or obesity simply because the definitions of those diseases were changed. The Seattle Times investigation uncovered that many experts writing the treatment guidelines for a broad spectrum of diseases had drug-company ties, ranging from research contracts to consultancies and stock ownership.

The result of this drug industry-promoted disease reclassification is that tens of millions more Americans were labeled as having hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, or obesity during the 1990s due to these redefined standards. The outcomes include huge increases in prescription drug sales, overall soaring healthcare costs, rising patient anxiety, and millions of people taking drugs that may carry greater health risks than the underlying conditions they were prescribed for.

The article notes that, due to expanded diagnosis parameters, three out of four Americans now technically have at least one of the commonly medicated diseases. However, millions of them are not truly sick and may never be, even without medication. Dr. John Kitzhaber of The Foundation for Medical Excellence in Portland, who served as Oregon’s governor from 1995 to 2003, stated, “We have a system that nobody but Big Pharma is happy with.”

Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a Dartmouth medical professor and editor of Effective Clinical Practice, a journal of the American College of Physicians, voiced his concern that more healthy people are being classified as sick solely to increase drug sales. He commented, “You can’t tell me that three-quarters of my population is sick before I start. That just doesn’t pass the laugh test.” Welch continued, “Our business is in a hard place right now. A lot of docs know it’s not right.”