The Marketing of Fake Diseases

The Marketing of Fake Diseases

Peter Kopa, Prague, 29.5.2026

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qeaUdrN1p84

Marketing Based on Invented Diseases

On the U.S. program “The Brownstone Show,” Canadian expert Alan Cassels, co-author of the groundbreaking book “Selling Sickness,” outlined the strategies by which the medical-pharmaceutical complex redefines normal human health conditions. This is one of the most troubling lies of the contemporary pharmaceutical industry: the systematic expansion of disease definitions to gain millions of new patients. The goal is to generate billions in corporate profits, which citizens pay for directly out of pocket or indirectly through health insurance. As a result, this sector absorbs the largest share of a country’s economic output.

• France: Spends \(11.9\%\) of its GDP on healthcare and \(2.1\%\) on defense.
• Germany: Allocates \(11.8\%\) of its GDP to healthcare and \(2.1\%\) to the armed forces.
• United Kingdom: Spends \(10.9\%\) of its GDP on healthcare, while the defense budget is around \(2.3\%\).
• Spain: Allocates \(9.7\%\) of its GDP to healthcare and \(1.3\%\) to defense. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Cassels, who has spent decades researching this phenomenon, identifies three fundamental strategies: redefining normal variations in the body as diseases, lowering diagnostic thresholds to create millions of new “patients,” and promoting lifelong treatments for essentially healthy people.

According to research documented in “Selling Sickness,” medicalization processes have turned the pharmaceutical industry into a global business worth over $500 billion annually. This exponential growth does not reflect an increase in actual diseases, but rather a deliberate expansion of the boundaries defining what constitutes a medical condition. Minor problems are redefined as serious diseases, and common ailments are labeled as pathological conditions requiring medication, while the pharmacopoeia of healing plants or less expensive treatments is consistently overlooked. https://thinktanklatam.org/el-senado-de-usa-se-planta-contra-el-covid/

The COVID-19 pandemic, according to Cassels, represented the most dramatic manifestation of these dynamics, where media panic, risk distortion, and the manipulation of statistics—such as the infection fatality rate (IFR)—were used to drive an unprecedented abusive response. Amish communities, which faced the pandemic without the restrictive measures forcibly implemented in the rest of society, experienced comparable or better outcomes, becoming a viral meme that challenged official narratives regarding the need for mass interventions.

Specific Cases

https://thinktanklatam.org/el-trasfondo-oscuro-en-la-sanidad/

One of the most significant examples is the evolution of cholesterol guidelines and the widespread use of statins, medications that lower LDL cholesterol levels in the blood. Over the past three decades, the thresholds for initiating statin treatment have been systematically lowered. The fundamental fact that Cassels highlights is that high cholesterol is not a disease in itself, but a risk factor; however, three decades of relentless marketing have led the public to perceive it as a condition requiring medication.

Another paradigmatic case is the redefinition of osteoporosis as a disease. In 1994, the World Health Organization convened experts—all funded by pharmaceutical companies—to establish a definition of osteoporosis. The experts themselves later admitted that this decision was arbitrary. Osteoporosis is not technically a disease, but a risk factor for future fractures; yet marketing has led millions of women (and men) to perceive it as a medical condition requiring immediate medication.

The phenomenon of “overscreening” or excessive diagnostic testing represents another critical dimension of “disease mongering”. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests to detect prostate cancer have been particularly controversial. One study estimated that overdiagnosis increases with age, from 27 percent at age 55 to 56 percent at age 75. This means that more than half of older men diagnosed with prostate cancer via PSA have tumors that would never have caused them problems. However, once diagnosed, many undergo prostate biopsies (which can cause bleeding and infection), surgery, and radiation therapy (which can cause incontinence, erectile dysfunction, and other complications). The European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) found that, for every life saved, 48 men receive treatment and 1,068 undergo screening.

Colonoscopies and other early detection methods face similar dilemmas. Although some screening may save lives by detecting aggressive cancers at early stages, there is growing evidence that mass screening disproportionately detects low-risk cancers while missing many of the most aggressive tumors, which may progress too rapidly to be found through periodic testing. The result is a system that subjects millions of healthy people to invasive, costly, and potentially harmful procedures, while generating massive revenue for the medical industry without producing commensurate improvements in public health.

Introduction of New Pathological Categories

The arsenal of “disease mongering” includes the direct creation of new diagnostic categories. For example: “female sexual dysfunction,” “social anxiety disorder,” and other conditions represent efforts to pathologize normal human experiences and complex social problems. In the case of female sexual dysfunction, pharmaceutical companies funded “disease awareness” campaigns that defined normal variation in sexual desire as a medical condition requiring drug treatment.

Patient groups, paid by the pharmaceutical industry, were recruited as “the public face” of the condition, while “key opinion leaders” (prominent doctors paid by pharmaceutical companies) promoted both the “disease” and the product. In this deception, many doctors lend themselves to supporting the scheme in exchange for compensation.

Social anxiety disorder is another telling example. Shyness, introversion, and anxiety in social situations—which are normal personality traits in the general population—were redefined as a psychiatric disorder treatable with medication. Massive advertising campaigns convinced millions of people that their social discomfort was not a normal variation of the human experience, but a medical condition requiring pharmacological intervention.

The pattern is consistent: identify a common human experience or a normal biological variation, reclassify it as a medical condition through consensus conferences (often funded by industry), launch “awareness” campaigns that generate fear and urgency, recruit prominent physicians and patient groups to promote the diagnosis, and finally market a pharmacological treatment as the solution. This process does not stem from genuine scientific advances in understanding the disease, but from marketing strategies designed to expand markets and maximize profits.

Overweight is another case: Cassels emphasizes that exercise, diet, and acceptance of natural variation are better alternatives than medication for most people. The medicalization of obesity diverts attention from the social and environmental determinants of weight gain (urban design that discourages exercise, widespread availability of ultra-processed foods, workplace stress, economic inequality) and channels it into individual treatments that generate massive corporate profits

The erosion of institutional trust

The phenomenon of “disease mongering” has consequences that transcend individual health. Jeffrey Tucker connects these practices to broader issues of freedom and institutional trust. When the medical-industrial complex systematically transforms healthy people into patients, it erodes personal autonomy and people’s ability to trust their own experience and judgment. Medicalization turns everyday life into an endless series of risks requiring expert supervision, reducing individuals to passive consumers of medical services and pharmaceutical products.

Toward a Health-Centered Medicine

The conversation between Cassels and Tucker points toward an alternative vision of medicine and public health. Instead of continually expanding the boundaries of disease to create new pharmaceutical markets, a genuinely wellness-oriented health system would focus on the social and environmental determinants of health: adequate nutrition, regular physical activity, social connection, meaningful work, economic security, and physical environments that promote well-being. These interventions, though less profitable for the pharmaceutical industry, have much deeper and more lasting impacts on population health than the mass medicalization of normal biological variations.

Solutions to this problem

Reforming this system requires profound structural changes: eliminating pharmaceutical industry funding of medical research, clinical guidelines, and continuing medical education; creating public registries of all research results, including unpublished studies; freeing the research process from the control of the pharmaceutical sector; and reorienting health systems toward prevention and well-being rather than the detection and treatment of disease. These reforms will face massive resistance from powerful corporate interests, but they are essential to creating health systems that genuinely serve the well-being of the population rather than shareholder profits.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated both the power and the dangers of the medical-industrial complex when it operates without restrictions or critical scrutiny. The lessons from that episode, combined with decades of research documented by Cassels and other critics of “disease mongering,” point to the urgent need for profound structural reforms. The challenge is not merely technical or scientific, but fundamentally political and ethical: will we allow the medical-industrial complex to continue transforming human life into an endless series of diagnoses and treatments, or will we reclaim our autonomy and build health systems genuinely oriented toward human well-being and flourishing? The answer will determine the health and freedom of future generations.