PLoS medicine
-
Most regulatory agencies, says Mintzes, fail to treat regulation of drug promotion as a public health concern. Unless this changes, she says, the public can expect more unfettered disease mongering.
-
Historical Article
Female sexual dysfunction: a case study of disease mongering and activist resistance.
Tiefer highlights key steps in the "creation" of a new diagnosis, female sexual dysfunction, and of the campaign to challenge its reductionist approach to women's sexual problems.
-
Evolutionary life history theory predicts that, in the absence of contraception, any enhancement of maternal condition can increase human fertility. Energetic trade-offs are likely to be resolved in favour of maximizing reproductive success rather than health or longevity. Here we find support for the hypothesis that development initiatives designed to improve maternal and child welfare may also incur costs associated with increased family sizes if they do not include a family planning component. ⋯ This study is, to our knowledge, the first to demonstrate a link between a technological development intervention and an increase in both birth rate and childhood malnutrition. Women's nutritional status was not improved by the energy-saving technology, because energy was diverted into higher birth rates. We argue that the contribution of biological processes to increased birth rates in areas of the developing world without access to modern contraception has been overlooked. This highlights the continued need for development programmes to be multisectoral, including access to and promotion of contraception.