Author: Roy Moynihan and Alan Cassels

ISBN: 156025856X

Selling Sickness starts off with the now famous quote where the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck lamented that his company was limited to selling its products to only sick people and that his dream was to make drugs he could sell to everyone, including the healthy. This book shows how much has changed in the thirty years since that statement was made. Chillingly Selling Sickness paints a picture of Merck's fantasy coming true. Roy Moynihan and Alan Cassels make the case that the biggest sellers in drugs, and the most expensive, are made, marketed, and sold to the healthiest of Americans.

Filled with facts, statistics, and personal stories that will make you second guess your doctors. Selling Sickness is a wake up call for every American. It exposes the nasty truths about the drug company paid for Federal Drug Administration, an agency that is meant to protect the population but now aids pharmaceuticals in convincing everyone they're sick, and rushing untested and unsafe drugs to the market. It also shows how this is almost entirely an American phenomena. Find out how many of our illnesses aren't even recognized in other parts of the world. Find out how many of our drugs aren't allowed to be marketed elsewhere because they are ineffectual, or even dangerous.

I found Selling Sickness to be extremely persuasive and, even more surprising, an easy read. With no medical background at all Moynihan and Cassels broke down the oftentimes confusing language of medicine into an easy to read, and dare I say, enjoyable book. I was downright appalled to learn some shocking truths about the world of pharmaceuticals, that the drug companies pay the bills at the F.D.A, and how the 'specialists', sometimes not even actual doctors, who set the guidelines for what's considered healthy and what's considered medicatable, are many times on the payroll of the companies creating the drugs. If you can read this book and not feel like changes need to be made then you didn't read it close enough.

However, if you read medical books or articles often you may find Selling Sickness to be more of the same. After perusing several of the similar books out there I found out that this book really offers nothing new to the table. Even being a novice at this type of book myself my attention waned a bit towards the end as the authors repeated the same facts they started the book off with, for about the fourth or fifth time. It doesn't make their message any less true, but it won't hold the interest of some readers of long.

The above review was contributed by: Renee Mallett:  Published journalist, reviewer, and creative writer. Freelance editor:  Author of several non-fiction books. To read more of Renee's reviews CLICK HERE