I feel so validated, vindicated and authenticated right now. I've been saying FOR YEARS, 15 to be precise, that we are being marketed IN to bad health, fear and fat, among other things, and to pay attention.
I've just read "The Science of Fear" by Daniel Gardner.
He sites some interesting medical statistics, which confirm what we've talked about in classes. "Many of the disease awareness campaigns are underwritten by the marketing departments of the big drug companies-not the organizations that are interested in public health. They also hire marketing departments that are expert at 'condition branding' whose skills include 'fostering the creation' of new medical disorders and dysfunctions."
Along those same lines, for instance, they shift the line between healthy and diseased, both in our mind's perception, and in the medical practice itself.
"Steven Wolosin and Lisa Schwartz, doctors and researchers at the Dartmouth Medical School, were among the first to analyze this process. In 1999 they published a paper examining proposals by various professional associations to change the thresholds for diagnosis of high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity. In every case, the new thresholds made it easier for people to be qualified as having these conditions. They then calculated that if all the new standards were put in place, 87.5 million otherwise healthy Americans would suddenly be deemed to have at least one chronic condition-and 3/4 of all Americans would be considered 'diseased'." Instantly. It's called spinning the numbers, but this isn't about getting us to buy a brand of tissue, this is about our health state, which is in our mind.
"Erectile dysfunction, female sexual dysfunction, hair loss, osteoporosis, restless leg syndrome, shyness, are just a few of the conditions whose seriousness and prevalence have been systematically inflated by drug companies seeking bigger markets." How many of us have seen these ads? All of us. Every channel. And every one has a pill that you need to take. Let's ad depression, anxiety, and sleeplessness to the list as well. Arthritis is getting up there, and cholesterol. And then there are the ads for the early warnings like flu shots, mammograms, and vaccines for cervical cancer.
1. The critical first step in getting people to ask their doctors for a pill or test - language. He calls it 'medicalizing' a problem, and that's why we have so many medical ads in women's magazines next to the recipes now.
2. People will be more likely to conclude they have a problem if it is common, so they push statistics at us, but the statistics are often unsubstantiated or from reports that the medical community doesn't take seriously. They also quote from the center of the pack where the marketing dollar is, rather than from the truth. Case in point-breast cancer. I'll write more on that tomorrow.
3. And now you have pharmaceuticals treating risk factors and the risk factor becomes a disease itself which inflats the numbers because anyone taking the med is now considered a 'patient'.
This is selling sickness, and it's extremely dangerous because it bypasses our thinking mind and hits us in our emotional center-all good advertising does. It sells. And the bottom line of disease...is money.