Disease mongering is now part of the global health debate

In this essay, we report briefly on the inaugural international conference on disease mongering in Newcastle, Australia, which coincided with a special themed issue of PLoS Medicine on the same subject, discuss its subsequent impact, and raise possible directions for academic inquiry and policy reform. Disease mongering is the contemporary form of “medicalisation.” It is a process now driven by both corporate and professional interests, and it has become part of the global debate about health care. International consumer groups now target drug company–backed disease mongering as a wasteful threat to public health, while the global pharmaceutical industry has been forced to defend its promotion of “lifestyle” medicines for problems like slimming and sexual difficulties. Unnecessary medicalisation and medication may be wasting many precious health resources, with obvious opportunity costs for private and public health insurers alike. Producing credible estimates of the magnitude of those costs is a future direction that should be urgently pursued.