Skeptic's Guide to Selling Sickness

Apparently, Canadians are more skeptical as a culture than Americans. I wonder what that’s about, what the difference can be traced back to.

Could it be that although we are a capitalist society, our socialist values lead us to question authority more than our southern neighbours?

Maybe it’s the influence that the French culture from Quebec has on all Canadians who live in a country that allows one province to have its own Constitution and legal system. Maybe that makes us all more inclined to see and accept many angles of any story.

Could the way we accept new Canadians into our country, as bringing new ideas as opposed to creating a melting pot, be influencing our collective skeptical nature?

Perhaps it’s due to our founding principles of Peace, Order and Good Government, which is quite different from the American’s Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

For whatever reason, Canadians tend to be more skeptical citizens than our American cousins (and, in my case, siblings). And, our skepticism about the pharmaceutical industry’s motives have lead one Canadian, Alan Cassels of British Columbia, to co-author quite an eye-opening book. It’s called, Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All Into Patients.

(Disclosure: I am a friend and work colleague of Alan’s and am currently house-sitting for him. In fact, my laptop is sitting on Alan’s desk as I type this entry).

I’m on holiday. Relaxing. Reading. And while my husband is unraveling the mysteries of the Half-blood Prince, I am unraveling the mysteries of how every American and Canadian has become a patient in need of some pharmaceutical magic pill.

Selling Sickness is a must-read if you are skeptical about the ulterior motives of Big Pharma and need some good arguments to help make your point at parties and to your pill-popping parents.

If you are not skeptical about Big Pharma’s motives, having been hoodwinked by industry greed, it’s even more important for you to read Selling Sickness. I will offer you a money-back guarantee* that, after reading this book, you will live a happier life knowing what’s really going on behind the prescriptions your doctor is writing to treat your high cholesterol, depression, menopause, adult ADD, high blood pressure, social anxiety disorder, pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder, osteoporosis, irritable bowel and/or syndrome female sexual dysfunction.

The best quote from the book so far:

“Thirty years ago, Henry Gadsden, the head of Merck, one of the world’s largest drug companies, told Fortune magazine that he wanted Merck to be more like chewing gum maker Wrigley’s. It had long been his dream, he said, to make drugs for healthy people so that Merck could “sell to everyone.” Gadsden’s dream now drives the marketing machinery for the most profitable industry on earth.”

You can read an excerpt from the chapter on shaping public perceptions with a case study on the creation of the newly created social anxiety disorder. (Oh my god…I have that!).

*Okay. Not really. But I still stand behind my belief that this book is one of the most important you can read to wrangle control of your health care away from profit interest and back to your own self-interest, which is really where your health care provider's attention should be directed, don’t you think?