I saw an article that was posted at Mad, Melancholic Feminista on April 1st and I was sure it had to be an April Fool’s prank. Titled “Scientists find new disease: motivational deficiency disorder,” it contained this paragraph:
The condition is claimed to affect up to one in five Australians and is characterised by overwhelming and debilitating apathy. Neuroscientists at the University of Newcastle in Australia say that in severe cases motivational deficiency disorder can be fatal, because the condition reduces the motivation to breathe.
And this:
David Henry, a clinical pharmacologist at the University of Newcastle and long time critic of pharmaceutical marketing strategies, says that although he appreciates that some people with severe motivational deficiency disorder may need treatment, he is concerned that the prevalence estimates of one in five are inflated and that ordinary laziness is being medicalised. “Indolebant may bring some relief to those with a debilitating form of MoDeD, but common laziness is not a disease. People have an absolute right to just sit there.”
I thought surely the whole thing had to be a joke. Motivational deficency disorder? This time of year, especially on a sunny day, that pretty much defines third year law students. Then I saw a link to something called the “Inaugural Conference on Disease-Mongering,”
and I quickly clicked upon it, certain that more blogular satiric hilarity would ensue. Except not only does the conference seem to be real, it actually sounds pretty darn interesting, and worthy as well. Here is an excerpt from the program:
A Provocative Symposium on the Selling of Sickness
The ascendancy of market logic has both expanded and legitimised the commercialisation of medicine. In the pharmaceutical sector, competitive enterprise dominates not only the development of drugs -and increasingly their diffusion – but also the very definitions of the illnesses they are used to treat.
Industry capacity for innovation, essential for sustaining high profitability, has arguably extended beyond the invention of novel products to the creation of new illnesses, disorders and dysfunction, and the expansion of old ones. Using informal alliances with physician and patient groups, and with the assistance of public relations experts, drug companies now ‘brand’ conditions just as they brand medicines.
Contentiously characterised as ‘disease-mongering’ by the late Lynn Payer many marketing strategies appear to be about selling sickness in order to sell drugs. Examples of disorders that have been represented in this way are as diverse as male and female erectile dysfunction, social anxiety disorder, alopecia, and irritable bowl. No-one questions that some individuals suffering from these ‘conditions’ experience genuine morbidity. The ‘disorders’ are also difficult to define and quantify, tend to be chronic and in some cases seem to represent normal human variation or the predictable but undesired effects of ageing.
In the lead up to this global symposium we are commissioning a series of thoughtful academic and accessible discussion papers that will assay the role of marketing in contemporary medical practice, and attempt to understand and challenge the phenomenon of disease-mongering.
Check out the abstracts here. If this actually is a joke, someone please advise me quickly, so that I can go lay down for a while.
–Ann Bartow
