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http://sellingsickness.com/final-statement/

...The statement below was shaped by many contributors and discussed at “Selling Sickness, 2013: People before Profits” in Washington, DC, In February, 2013.

CALL TO ACTION ON SELLING SICKNESS

Washington, DC

We come together as researchers, health care professionals, activists, advocates, patients, caregivers and citizens deeply troubled about the growing corruption of medical science and health care.

We demand an end to industry-promoted disease-mongering that manipulates health concerns and causes harm through practices that medicalise normal life and deceive professionals and the public.

Commercial imperatives are being allowed to corrupt clinical, research and marketing practices which now include hiding data, inflating diagnostic categories, unnecessary screening and treatment, deceptive marketing, faulty and biased research and publishing, inadequate oversight, a neglect of social factors and injustices, and uncritical, unbalanced reporting.

We are alarmed at how undergraduate and post-graduate professional education are based on untrustworthy “science” designed to expand markets rather than impart valid knowledge or improve individual or public health.

Hazardous practices and distorted science harm patients, waste public resources, create illness and health anxiety, hoodwink the public, corrupt knowledge, corrode professionalism, and expose everyone to unnecessary, costly and dangerous tests and treatments...

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http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2809