“Disease mongering”

Giving Legs to Restless Legs: A Case Study of How the Media Helps Make People Sick

Defined (quote):

“Disease mongering” is the effort by pharmaceutical companies (or others with similar financial interests) to enlarge the market for a treatment by convincing people that they are sick and need medical intervention. Typically, the disease is vague, with nonspecific symptoms spanning a broad spectrum of severity—from everyday experiences many people would not even call “symptoms,” to profound suffering. The market for treatment gets enlarged in two ways: by narrowing the definition of health so normal experiences get labeled as pathologic, and by expanding the definition of disease to include earlier, milder, and presymptomatic forms (e.g., regarding a risk factor such as high cholesterol as a disease in itself).

Comments: I've been really skeptical about RLS. It strikes me that drug manufacturers cook up a drug and then make up syndromes to treat with it. I think that by and large the E.D. drugs are this!