Sex, Lies & Pharmaceuticals: How drug companies plan to profit from Female Sexual Dysfunction

by Ray Moynihan and Dr Barbara Mintzes

A provocative exposé of the lucrative industry being built around a newly constructed condition.

Against a backdrop of virtual intercourse, online porn, and burgeoning Viagra sales, Sex, Lies, and Pharmaceuticals reveals how women’s sexual difficulties are being repackaged as symptoms of a new disorder. In this compelling book, award-winning journalist Ray Moynihan teams up with drug assessment specialist Barbara Mintzes to investigate the creation of female sexual dysfunction or FSD, and the marketing machine that promises to “cure” it. The authors go inside the corridors of medical power to visit drug company–sponsored scientific meetings and medical education events where doctors are being trained to see women’s sexual problems as the symptoms of FSD — a pharmaceutically treatable condition. Moynihan and Mintzes explore the underlying causes of sexual dissatisfaction among women and expose how global drug companies exploit those problems in an attempt to create the next billion dollar disease.

Available now to pre-order from Borders.

Ten Questions You Must Ask Your Doctor

by Ray Moynihan and Melissa Sweet

A consumer-friendly book about what a dose of healthy skepticism is just what the doctor ordered.

Daily the world is rocked by scandals about the side effects of drugs, the dangers of unprofessional doctors, and the risks of overcrowded and dysfunctional hospitals. Despite the life-saving technologies, the wonder drugs and miracle cures, much is wrong with modern medicine. There is little doubt that a dose of healthy scepticism is just what the doctor ordered.

With clarity, simplicity and compelling examples, Ten Questions You Must Ask Your Doctor will empower you and your loved ones to ask the right questions, to find the best care and to avoid treatments that may not be best for you. Full of helpful tips about how to become a better informed patient, this is a book that belongs on every family bookshelf. Asking questions is good for your health.

Available now from Allen and Unwin.

Selling Sickness: How the worlds biggest drug companies are turning us all into patients

by Ray Moynihan & Alan Cassels.

Translated into 12 languages. Available now from Amazon.com.

Thirty years ago, Henry Gadsden, the head of Merck, one of the world’s largest drug companies, told Fortune magazine that he wanted Merck to be more like chewing gum maker Wrigley’s. It had long been his dream to make drugs for healthy people so that Merck could “sell to everyone.” Gadsden’s dream now drives the marketing machinery of the most profitable industry on earth. Drug companies are systematically working to widen the very boundaries that define illness, and the markets for medication grow ever larger. Mild problems are redefined as serious illness and common complaints are labeled as medical conditions requiring drug treatments. Runny noses are now allergic rhinitis, PMS has become a psychiatric disorder, and hyperactive children have ADD. When it comes to conditions like high cholesterol or low bone density, being “at risk” is sold as a disease. Selling Sickness reveals how widening the boundaries of illness and lowering the threshold for treatments is creating millions of new patients and billions in new profits, in turn threatening to bankrupt health-care systems all over the world. As more and more of ordinary life becomes medicalized, the industry moves ever closer to Gadsden’s dream: “selling to everyone.”

Praise for Selling Sickness:

“a compelling case” – New York Times

“forceful and well-written” – Los Angeles Times

“a welcome, bitter tonic” – Journal of the American Medical Association

Too Much Medicine? The business of health and its risks for you.

by Ray Moynihan

ABC Books, Sydney, 1998

Ray’s Moynihan’s first book about the sometimes unhealthy business of medicine.

Currently out of print, but used copies are available from Amazon.co.uk.