Maybe the biggest torment about our TVs these days is all the drug commercials where Big Pharma companies pump our brains full of billions of dollars of propaganda and pill mongering.
There seems to be no end to the newly discovered diseases, modern cures and pharmaceutical breakthroughs. All the commercials blend together, depicting the same serene scene of picnics or casual strolling with birds chirping while an invisible voice drones through an endless list of possible side effects that we’ve been conditioned to ignore. (“If your heart stops …”)
It seems there will be no end to all these new serums, vaccines, ointments and pills until they run out of letters of the alphabet. Already we have Skyriza, Xarelto, Trudicity, Biktarvy, Eliquis, Lyrica, and, of course, Viagra.
The history of inventing diseases is a very long one. We all remember depictions of snake oil shysters and magic elixir hucksters. In 1879, Dr. Joseph Lister re-formulated an industrial floor-cleaning agent, naming it after himself (“Listerine”) and declaring it a cure for Halitosis, previously known as “bad breath.”
The list of invented diseases is equally long, including restless leg syndrome (RLS), dry eye syndrome, social anxiety disorder, low T, irritable bowel syndrome, baldness and various sexual disorders.
And, then, there is Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD.) The case of the advancement, codification and the accepted use of the terms ADHD and Learning Disabilities, we believe, is an especially egregious and tragic case of Disease Mongering. We will share a detailed case study below.
“If you want to stir up worry in the public, and you’ve got the advertising dollars to do it, you can turn almost anything into a disease,” Dr. Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor said on a recent “60 Minutes” TV segment. Federal FDA rules prohibit drug companies from advertising experimental or trial drugs, but they can advertise the imaginary ailments, chronic conditions or modern-life disorders instead
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“Disease-mongering,” wrote Lynn Payer in her 1990s book, “Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers Are Making You Feel Sick.” “Is trying to convince essentially well people that they are sick, or slightly sick people that they are very ill. … It’s a big business.”
Once upon a time, the daytime TV soap opera series sold us, well, soap. Now it is cures for weak bones, dry orifices, growling stomachs and many other minor maladies that we never knew could be so debilitating or life threatening until we turned on the TV.
All this Disease Mongering is much more than just an intrusion on our TV time. Besides the billions and billions of profits that Big Pharma reaps from us each year, all this pharmaceutical pandering has altered our lives in foundational ways. This “medicalization” of our lives has changed how we raise and educate our children, how we define and treat mental illness, how we view “end of life” issues, and, how we define what is “normal” or “acceptable” behaviors.
One such example is Social Anxiety Disorder, which most of us might call shyness, but drug-maker GlaxoSmithKline calls SAD. The giant pharma firm recommends its antidepressant Paxil as a solution. Visible symptoms of SAD can include various forms of shyness including fear of public speaking, eating in front of others or using public bathrooms. We wonder if it would work for people who have a fear of taking pills?
Cases like Paxil and other mood-altering drugs continue to be debated by scientists about whether these disorders are a form of biological dysfunction or just forms of more “medicalization” of differing personalities and social deviances. (There are probably pills for taming “wildness,” but that’s not how they would be advertised.)
The most alarming impact from Disease Mongering we have seen is case after case where science-based diagnostic standards have been relaxed and markets for medical intervention have been expanded. When people say, “yeah, there’s a pill for that,” it’s now too often true, but it is no longer a funny joke.
Fifty years ago, in the middle of the 1970s, as a daily newspaper reporter assigned to the education beat, I witnessed and reported on the widespread adoption of ACHD, ADD and LD. These various labels for “learning disabilities” were treated and accepted as professional diagnoses requiring medical intervention. All of a sudden, hundreds of fidgety, bored or strong-willed young children were being called something new — “hyperactive.” Well-funded lobbying efforts got these syndromes included under the federal American Disabilities Act, certifying their place in both the medical profession and in teachers’ training and curriculums.
The well-orchestrated public opinion campaign I witnessed has led us to a world where millions of young learners are prescribed mood-altering drugs like Ritalin and Adderall. Much of mainstream pedagogy and special education programs are based on the pseudo-science claiming that ACHD is a medical disease or brain disorder, which requires medical intervention. (Fact check: researchers have found severe and rare cases of brain chemical imbalances and clinically-verified conditions of dyslexia, autism and depression. Such physiological and psychological conditions do exist, but not by the millions of cases that now proliferate.)
To this day, millions of young learners are prescribed drugs to treat a disease or “condition” that is not supported by any physical or biological science. Previously, these cases were treated with a change of environment or learning approach. Educators practiced positive behavior reinforcement, parent training and larger doses of patience by everyone, not pharmaceutical miracles.
Just last week (June 3, 2023) reporter Andrew Anthony of The Guardian found that the use of mood-altering and attention-sharpening drugs has increased by 400 percent in the last few years that included the COVID-19 pandemic. “This (ACHD) neurodevelopmental condition is shrouded in misunderstanding, uncertainty and controversy,” he reported.
The National Association of Special Education Teachers (NASET), in its 2022 annual report wrote: “Learning disabilities vary from person to person. One person with LD may not have the same kind of learning problems as another person with LD. One person may have trouble with reading and writing. Another person with LD may have problems understanding math.”
In 1975 Peter Schrag and Diane Divosky wrote a lightning rod book titled, “The Myth of the Hyperactive Child and Other Means of Child Control.” In the midst of my reporting where I was looking for critical voices that also might have been questioning why hundreds and hundreds of school children were being labeled as ADD or learning disabled, the book resonated with me. Unfortunately, the book was attacked by the new National Association of Children with Learning Disabilities (ACLD.) The ACLD, now known as LDA (Learning Disabilities Association) had powerful friends within and beyond the ranks of Big Pharma. One of the major advocates at the time was Carrie Rozelle, the wife of the powerful commissioner of NFL professional football, Pete Rozelle.
Schrag and Divosky detailed the drug manufacturers’ promotions for Ritalin at PTA meetings, Big Pharma’s lobbying against FDA warnings and they reported on individual cases of parents being coerced to prescribe drugs for their children or risk school expulsion. They traced cases of releases of confidential student files to drug companies and campaigns to more broadly define “deviant” behaviors and “attention disorders.”
Today, after a half century of living with the pseudo science and the mongered disease of learning disabilities there is no going back. Too many parents and educators have since testified of miracle cures by Ritalin and Adderall that saved their young child’s learning career. There is no room for criticism that such individual cases might have just as easily been resolved by a simple change of a student’s learning environment. Few would dispute that less TV and social media screen time will improve any student’s education success and improved ability to focus and be more goal-oriented. But Big Pharma continues to promote new answers, prescriptions and counter diagnoses.
“There is no clear and widely accepted definition of learning disabilities,” the NASET report concludes. “Because of the multidisciplinary nature of the field, there is ongoing debate on the issue of definition, and currently at least 12 definitions appear in the professional literature.”
Dr. Debora Waber, a clinical psychologist at Boston’s Children’s Hospital and a current day critic of the “over diagnosis” of learning disability profiles has written:
“The learning disability is not contained in the child, but in the interactions between the child and the world.”
In a recent year, drug prescriptions written to address ADD and other learning disorders totaled $9 billion, an alarming five-fold increase over the previous decade.
What, you might ask is the source of such an increase in sales. The answer is that Big Pharma has convinced the medical and psychology professions that, lo and behold, learning disabilities are just as rampant among adults as we always “knew” they were among young children.
The long history of this case of this mongered disease continues in a world where nonconformity, diversity and dissent are discouraged and often penalized. Echoes of Huxley’s “Brave New World” and Orwell’s “1984” should send chills up our spines. All this has happened, we proffer, because “we forgot to remember.”
“There is no room for criticism that such individual cases might have just as easily been resolved by a simple change of a student’s learning environment.”
Right on!
“There is no room for criticism that such individual cases might have just as easily been resolved by a simple change of a student’s learning environment.”
Thank you!