The Australian ABC Catalyst program recently ran a documentary, entitled "Too Much Medicine". It's a rather thought-provoking program.
Bottom line is the vast profits to be made from producing drugs that are supposed to keep people well, rather than producing drugs that cure really sick people.
Really sick people mostly just die, and the market for the drugs ends - therefore the market for drugs for people that are otherwise well - but who just
might develop some problem later in life - is just too attractive for the pharmaceutical companies to ignore.
We're talking about a pharmaceutical industry that just keeps growing in leaps and bounds - and for which industry, the estimated income by 2020 will exceed
US$1 TRILLION.
Catalyst program - Too Much Medicine
One point brought up in the documentary was the recommendation in the U.K. that the percentage of "at-risk" heart-disease patients who were to be prescribed statins, be reduced to 10% from 20%.
However, a survey of U.K. doctors found that 2/3rds would ignore the recommendation, and still prescribe statins at the 20% rate.
The simple term for this is over-medication, and I personally believe this is very much a recent phenomenon - but a growing one, and a concerning one.