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North America Selling Sickness explores the unhealthy relationships between society, medical science and the pharmaceutical industry as they promote their new miracle cures -- selling not just drugs but also the latest diseases that go with them. Drug manufacturers today fund aggressive marketing campaigns designed to create public awareness of previously unknown diseases, or known by less dramatic names. Shyness thus becomes branded as "Social Anxiety Disorder," constant worry becomes "Generalized Anxiety Disorder," and premenstrual tension is now "Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder."
The sale of SSRI anti-depressant medications used to treat these and other diseases, such as Paxil, Zoloft and Prozac, has become an annual $20 billion market. Selling Sickness features commentary from paid medical consultants to the drug companies, patients, researchers, patient advocates, advertisers, attorneys, and psychiatrist Dr. David Healy, a critic of the pharmaceutical industry. The film also examines the deceptive use of clinical trials sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies, the highly addictive nature and many adverse side effects (like suicidal impulses among adolescent patients) of popular SSRI anti-depressants. At an FDA hearing in Washington, D.C., the testimony of parents who have lost their children to suicide starkly emphasizes the need for greater regulation of these heavily promoted and prescribed anti-depressants. |
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