Ray Moynihan & Alan Cassels 
Selling Sickness 
How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All Into Patients

In this hard-hitting indictment of the pharmaceutical industry,
Ray Moynihan and
Allan Cassels show how drug companies are systematically using their dominating influence in the world of medical science, drug companies are working to widen the very boundaries that define illness. 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.




Selling Sickness reveals how expanding 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 national healthcare systems all over the world. This Canadian edition includes an introduction placing the issue in a Canadian context and describing why Canadians should be concerned about the problem.

About the author

Ray Moynihan has been covering the business of health care for more than a decade with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Financial Review, and the British Medical Journal. He is an award-winning journalist and the author of three previous books, including
Selling Sickness, which has been translated into a dozen languages.


Alan Cassels is a drug policy researcher at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia. He has produced several full-length feature documentaries for CBC Ideas, including “Manufacturing Patients, ” which deals with the subject of selling sickness.