Medicalization

Drug assessment specialist Dr. Barbara Mintzes looks at the ways women’s sexual difficulties are being repackaged as symptoms of a disorder called “female sexual dysfunction” in order to feed a marketing machine that promises to “cure” it. Dr. Mintzes and Ray Moynihan co-authored the book, Sex, Lies, and Pharmaceuticals.

Argues that pharmaceutical companies increase consumer demand for more screening and medications by manipulating our fear of suffering and death. 

A factsheet about when it is useful to have a bone density test and when it is not appropriate – and possibly harmful – to have these tests done.

The website of a group of doctors in Britain concerned about the safety and the ethics of private screening tests, and about companies who advertise those tests. Includes resources to help people decide whether or not to take a screening test.

Discusses how whole body screening (e.g. Computerized Tomography (CT) scans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology or Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans) is promoted to healthy people as preventative health care, while the evidence shows it offers no proven health benefits and exposes people to unnecessary health risks.

A ten-part online series that outlines the growing problem of overdiagnosis and overuse of medical screening tests.

Discusses the most common and recommended types of screening and weighs the pros and cons of each. Deals with questions such as: Do mammograms save lives? Is a colonoscopy necessary for everyone? Is it worth it to spend thousands of dollars for a whole-body scan? Also examines the roles of practitioners and drug companies in getting us to “test-early-and-test-often.”

Podcast series of radio documentaries that arose from the Medicalization of Sex conference that took place in Vancouver in April 2011. The three podcasts explore the way in which sex has been positioned in popular culture, in medical discourse and in the news media, as something that is not simply healthy at times, but as necessary in the maintenance of good health. It looks at how this kind of discourse affects how women view their own sexuality, how it plays into compulsory sexuality, and asks: Is sex necessarily "healthy"?

The three parts are:
Part one: Sex for health
Part two: The trouble with female genitalia
Part three: Barbara Marshall -- 'Sexualizing the Third Age