Big Pharma Pushes Drugs That Cause Conditions They Are Supposed to Prevent

Yet again, women are the industry's main targets. Like gastroesophageal reflux and bipolar disease, osteopenia began to inflict millions when a drug to treat it was patented. "Osteopenia, or the risk of developing osteoporosis, was concocted as a disease at a World Health Organization osteoporosis conference in Rome in 1992 that was sponsored by two drug companies and a drug company foundation," writes Susan Kelleher in the Seattle Times. Using the bone density measurements or "T scores" of a 30-year-old woman as a standard, the new condition, osteopenia, had "boundaries so broad they include more than half of all women over 50," writes Kelleher. And it didn't hurt that 10,000 bone density measuring machines appeared in doctors' offices to detect the new disease -- only 750 existed in 1995 -- many owned and financed by Merck,... [read full story]