If You Worry About EPI, OAB, ASD and RA, Here's Another Initial Disease

Since Big Pharma sells drugs it also knows how to sell diseases which create a demand for its drugs. Just like Pharma could not sell a drug called desvenlafaxine (or a drug class called "serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors" now called SNRIs) they could not sell a disease called Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency--so enter initials.

Notable diseases Pharma sells with initials include EPI (see above), OAB (overactive bladder), ASD (autism spectrum disorder), GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) and RA (rheumatoid arthritis). The conditions may exist but not enough people self-diagnose with them or "ask their doctor" about them to make the profits Pharma wants.

Enter the new menopause-related "vasomotor symptoms" or VMS once called hot flashes, flushes or night sweats--another initial disease.

Menopause Revue

Until 2003, approximately 61 million US women took hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for the "disease" of menopause, once called simple aging. Drugmakers increased their take by moving the "start date" for menopause ahead ten years and inventing the term "perimenopause."

But then the wheels fell of the menopause franchise. HRT was found to increase the risk of breast cancer by 26 percent, heart attacks by 29 percent, stroke by 41 percent and to double the risk of blood clots and millions of women quit. For a while, "hormone" was even a dirty word.

But that was then! Now, millions of women raised on "ask your doctor" ads, think that not treating women for menopause "symptoms" is sexist versus giving women carcinogenic drugs for menopause is sexist.

Ads for Veozah Are Back. Why?

In 2023, the FDA approved Astellas' Veozah (fezolinetant) for VMS until a short time later it was linked to liver harm.

"We concluded this patient had liver injury as a result of Veozah (fezolinetant) treatment," noted the FDA late last year. "Patients should stop taking Veozah immediately and contact your health care professional who prescribed the medicine if you experience signs and symptoms that suggest liver problems."

But now drug ads for Veozah are back with a vengeance and the liver risks are called "rare." What changed? Money between hands?

Notably, Bayer is also pursuing a "VMS" drug called elinzanetant.

Everyone-Is-Sick Marketing

Drugmakers want to create and sell drugs that millions will take for decades like meds for diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, obesity (the new fat drugs ) and of course mental health conditions which defy lab diagnosis.

So, it is no surprise that Pharma pathologizes normal health states whether rambunctious little boys who now have "ADHD," everyday mood/concentration problems which now make someone "bipolar" or "on the spectrum" and the natural, post-fertile aging of women of menopause. The pathologizing has also become ocular.

Now Pharma has a drug for presbyopia, the natural and expected eye condition of older people that makes it difficult to focus on near objects. A new drug called Vizz is "the first aceclidine-based solution for presbyopia." Drum roll.

Conclusion

Whether VMS or Vizz, Pharma knows that zippy names for real or imagined conditions pleases stockholders. It knows that fear advertising ("you may be at risk of") works. It knows that people, especially young ones, will embrace the identify, sense of belonging and victimhood of "living with" conditions no one heard of until there were drugs to treat them.

What to do? Avoid the fattening food and addictive prescription drugs that are marketed to you all day, every day on the Internet and TV. Despite the music, dancers and ebullient actors, the ads are not selling health, they are monetizing health--at your expense.

(Article changed on Aug 09, 2025 at 5:07 PM EDT)