Doctors call for disease reform Bond Uni researchers join fight for change

TOO many healthy patients are being branded as diseased, sparking a proposal for medical reform from Gold Coast researchers who say the current rampant, harmful overmedicalisation is often driven by ties to drug companies.

Bond University doctors have joined an international team to propose changes in the rules for defining disease for medical diagnosis. These are currently set by panels of specialists, some with pharmaceutical links.

Lead author, Dr Ray Moynihan, an Assistant Professor at Bond Uni, said the proposal was a response to the problem of expanding disease definitions which are “causing too many people to be diagnosed and treated unnecessarily, producing harm and waste and posing a major threat to human health and the sustainability of health systems”.

Published today in the British Medical Journal EvidenceBased Medicine, the authors recommend replacing existing panels with more multidisciplinary panels, that include representatives from consumer organisations, with all members free of financial ties to pharmaceutical or other interested companies.

“The aspiration is to see diagnoses offered to those who will benefit from them, rather than those for whom they may cause more harm than good,” said co-author, Dr Anna Stavdal president-elect of the World Organisation of

THE ASPIRATION IS TO SEE DIAGNOSES OFFERED TO THOSE WHO WILL BENEFIT FROM THEM, RATHER THAN THOSE FOR WHOM THEY MAY CAUSE MORE HARM THAN GOOD

DR ANNA STAVDAL Family Doctors. The study flags the problem of the controversial definition of chronic kidney disease, which labels many older people who will never experience related symptoms and was launched at a meeting sponsored by a drug company.

A vastly expanded definition of gestational diabetes, which may now label up to one in five pregnant women, despite a lack of good evidence that the women or their babies will gain meaningful benefits, has also been highlighted.

There is also a problem with the creation of “pre-diseases” such as pre-osteoporosis, or pre-diabetes, which classify healthy people who are essentially “at risk of being at risk”, the researchers have found.

“The human person can no longer be treated as an everexpanding marketplace of diseases, benefiting professional and commercial interests, while bringing great harm to those unnecessarily diagnosed,” the authors write.

The 13 authors of the proposal come from Europe, Latin America and Australia.