Pharmaceutical industry

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.

Reviews and analyzes disease awareness campaigns sponsored by pharmaceutical companies that use self-diagnostic tools. Uses the example of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) to discuss how the marketing of self-diagnosis can change the patient into a consumer to achieve the aims of drug companies. (Abstract only)

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

Brief to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women: Study of the impact of social media and new communications technologies on violence against women and girls. Outlines why new and social media platforms are so attractive to women end users, how they present dangers and can contribute to violence against women in the digital sphere and real life, and the ways in which new and emerging platforms can offer digital spaces for intervention, violence prevention and community building.