🔴 WATCH THE FULL EPISODE: https://ept.ms/49rAGggShow more Alan Cassels, author of “Selling Sickness,” says his entire view of medicine changed 30 years ago because of one disease: osteoporosis.
In the early 1990s, “a major pharmaceutical company in the US created a new drug to treat this condition—osteoporosis—which at that point wasn't very well understood. In fact, there wasn't really an agreed upon definition,” he says.
Representatives from pharmaceutical companies and doctors convened at the WHO and decided which level of bone density ought to be considered "normal."
“They set it at a certain level, in a way that…diagnosed something like 50% of the female population over 70 with having this condition…Basically overnight this portion of the population that has bone density below this now has this condition called osteoporosis.”
They effectively “medicalized normal aging of the basically entire female population. Overnight,” he says.
The company that marketed the drug donated bone density testing equipment to hospitals and clinics. Many millions of American women were prescribed a blockbuster drug against osteoporosis. And it turns out that that drug, when taken over several years, “actually makes people’s bones more brittle, more prone to breaking,” he says.
Medicalizing a normal condition of aging was “from start to finish.. a pharmaceutical industry construct,” he says. Show less
When I started becoming aware of this one disease and to see to which the industry had infiltrated itself into the definition of the disease, it changed my whole view of medicine, and that was osteoporosis.
And in the early 90s, a major pharmaceutical company in the U.S. created a new drug to treat this condition of osteoporosis, which at that point wasn't very well understood.
In fact, there wasn't really an agreed upon definition.
There was a meeting convened at the World Health Organization, and at that meeting, there were officials, there were endocrinologists and others, and representatives from pharmaceutical companies that were making drugs that were going to treat this condition.
And there they set the definition at a certain level of bone density.
So this is the density of your bones as you age.
They set it at a certain level in a way that you would have diagnosed something like 50% of the female population over 70 with having this condition.
They set the definition that way and basically said overnight that this portion of the population that has bone density below this now has this condition called osteoporosis.
Or if it's close to that, they might have something that is pre-osteoporosis or known as osteopenia.
And what you ended up doing is you medicalize normal aging of the basically entire female population overnight.
That drug became a blockbuster drug, prescribed widely.
The company that was marketing it bought bone density testing equipment and distributed it through all the clinics and hospitals throughout the U.S. and basically overnight created a condition that is a normal part of aging.
And really basically medicalized one's bones.
That has gone on to be extremely controversial because that drug, after time when you get millions of people taking a drug, that's when you start seeing the major problems, severe problems with swallowing, esophageal burning, and really over the long term, and this is cruel and ironic at the same time, those drugs, they're called the bisphosphonates, drugs and that class of drugs,
found that over time it actually makes people's bones more brittle.
So more prone to being, to breaking.
I mean, admittedly, elderly people falling, breaking a hip can be a quite serious problem.
Oftentimes that can lead to disability, nursing homes, and sort of the beginning of the end of a person's life.
Absolutely, you want to do what you can to reduce the sort of problems of broken bones in elderly people.
But preventing falls should be the focus, not using a drug that's going to alter the chemical composition of your bones, which ends up becoming something that made your bones more brittle.
Again, that was from start to finish, I would say, a pharmaceutical industry construct.
And now they've gone on, they've moved on to other classes of drugs.
But still, I have friends of mine who would be my age in their 50s and 60s.
They're on a bicycle, they fall off, they break their wrist, or they're skiing, or in an accident.
They get sent to their doctor.
The first thing they do, they'll send them for a bone density test.