Selling Sickness: The Conference
An exciting gathering of academic scholars, healthcare reformers, consumer organizations / advocates and progressive health journalists will gather next February in Washington, DC at Selling Sickness 2013: People before Profits.
The conference will focus on "disease mongering," which one medical journalist has defined as "trying to convince essentially well people that they are sick, or slightly sick people that they are very ill." And it will take up the challenge of developing strategies and coalitions that can turn this "global tide."
Topics will include misleading marketing, journalistic standards, over-treatment, over-diagnosis, whistleblowers, new roles for advocates, pharmacovigilance, clinical trials, activist narratives, new conflict of interest areas, evidence-based screening, igniting citizen outrage, and more.
Check out the conference website for the network's history, the call for papers (deadline October 1), the list of supporters (including the Center for Genetics and Society), a blog, and more.