February 16

Fake Drug, Fake Illness–People Believe It

Below , Australian artist Justine Cooper created a marketing campaign for a non-existent drug called Havidol (as in Have it All) for Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD), which she also invented.

 "The thing that amazes me is that it has been folded into real Web sites for panic and anxiety disorder. It's been folded into a Web site for depression. It's been folded into hundreds of art blogs." 

Another hillarious parody, also from Australia,  is a video describing a new "epidemic":
Motivational Deficiency Disorder: "In its mild forms, persons can't get off the beach…."
See video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoppJOtRLe4

That people are taken in by these parodies is a testament to how the drug industry backed up by psychiatry have insinuated non-diseases into the culture. However, nothing in the parodies compares with the actual nonesense that serves as the diagnostic criteria in psychiatry:

"Disruptive Behaviour Disorder is an expression used to describe a set of externalising negativistic behaviours that co-occur during childhood; and which are referred to collectively in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) as:
"Attention-Deficit and Disruptive Behaviour Disorders".  

There are three subgroups of externalising behaviours:
Oppositional Defiant disorder (ODD);
Conduct Disorder (CD);
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Oppositional Defiant disorder (ODD): often loses temper, often argues with adults, often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults' requests or rules, often deliberately annoys people, often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehaviour,  is often touchy or easily annoyed by others, is often angry and resentful,  is often spiteful or vindictive-  

"A high level of co-morbidity (almost 95%) was found among 236 ADHD children (aged 6-16 yrs) with conduct disorder, ODD and other related categories (Bird, Gould, & Staghezza Jaramillo, 1994). In an 8 year follow-up study, Barklay and colleagues (1990) found that 80% of the children with ADHD were still hyperactive as adolescents and that 60% of them had developed Oppositional Defiant or Conduct Disorder."

Logically that finding signifies that the "treatments" don't work!
In fact, it appears, children treated for ADHD developed an additional "disorder"

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
212-595-8974
veracare@ahrp.org
 
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070216/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_drug_fake
  Fake drug, fake illness — and people believe it!
Fri Feb 16,
A media exhibit featuring a campaign for a fake drug to treat a fictitious illness is causing a stir because some people think the illness is real.

Australian artist Justine Cooper created the marketing campaign for a non-existent drug called Havidol for Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD), which she also invented.

But the multi-media exhibit at the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York, which includes a Web site, mock television and print advertisements and billboards is so convincing people think it is authentic.

"People have walked into the gallery and thought it was real," Mahmood said in an interview.
"They didn't get the fact that this was a parody or satire."

But Mahmood said it really took off over the Internet. In the first few days after the Web site (www.havidol.com) went up, it had 5,000 hits. The last time he checked it had reached a quarter of a million.
"The thing that amazes me is that it has been folded into real Web sites for panic and anxiety disorder. It's been folded into a Web site for depression. It's been folded into hundreds of art blogs," he added.

The parody is in response to the tactics used by the drug industry to sell their wares to the public. Consumer advertising for prescription medications, which are a staple of television advertising in the United States, was legalised in the country in 1997. Cooper said she intended the exhibit to be subtle.

"The drug ads themselves are sometimes so comedic. I couldn't be outrageously spoofy so I really wanted it to be a more subtle kind of parody that draws you in, makes you want this thing and then makes you wonder why you want it and maybe where you can get it," she added.
Mahmood said that in addition to generating interest among the artsy crowd, doctors and medical students have been asking about the exhibit.  "I think people identify with the condition," he said.

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited.

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