Multinational Pharmaceutical Companies ‘Give Illnesses and Give Medicines’

The Financial Times reported on the 3rd that multinational pharmaceutical companies were leading ‘to create diseases’ to sell cure medicines.

This newspaper quoted the recent issue of a medical weekly, the British Medical Journal and reported that the female sexual dysfunction, which was similar to impotent of men, was included in the diseases that the pharmaceutical companies tried to create, and the newspaper added that if this dysfunction was acknowledged as a disease, a sale of billions of dollars worth of cure medicine like Viagra was possible.

This newspaper pointed out that although the pharmaceutical companies reported that females with sexual dysfunction were 43% of all females, it had low confidence because it was surveyed for only 1,500 people. And it asked how to consider the result of the research about the sexual organs of female white rats focused on animal vaginal blood congestion and clitoris impotence with human females` physical condition. It also added that, on top of that, female sexual dysfunction was occurred by complex factors such as stress and uneasy relationship with partners, so it was not right to consider a healthy woman as a patient with only reason of sexual disinclination.

Among those pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer, who sold 1.5 billion dollars worth of impotent cure medicine Viagra in 2001 only, is included. Pfizer elucidated on the 2nd, “We cannot clearly define the female sexual dysfunction, yet; however, there are females appealing some problems, so we are just trying to help.”

Hye-Yoon Park parkhyey@donga.com