About this reference

Manufactured Maladies is an independent, neutral reference about disease mongering — the widening of medical definitions to turn ordinary life into treatable illness. It explains the idea in plain language, with sources, and offers no medical advice.

What this site is

We publish sourced, plain-language pages on disease mongering, medicalization, overdiagnosis, pharmaceutical marketing and the campaigns that push back. The aim is health literacy: helping readers, patients, journalists and clinicians recognise how a condition can be defined, branded and marketed into being. We draw on the scholarly record — Lynn Payer, who named disease mongering; Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels; the PLoS Medicine collection; the BMJ “Too Much Medicine” initiative; Choosing Wisely and Cochrane — and summarise it fairly, in our own words.

What this site is not

This address was used in the past by a different, unrelated project. We are not that project, are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a continuation of it or any prior owner, and we revive no former brand. Nothing here is medical advice, diagnosis or treatment guidance, and we never tell a reader whether they personally have a condition. Real conditions are real; our subject is how their boundaries are drawn and sold.

How we handle sources

We name real people and works and describe them accurately, without reproducing copyrighted text. Where a precise figure is uncertain we describe the direction rather than invent a number. Corrections are welcome.