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Increasing numbers of healthy people are being unnecessarily labelled sick – potentially at the behest of drug companies, says an Australian researcher.
Writing in the Australian Prescriber, Dr Ray Moynihan points out that many of the expert panels which write guidelines for diagnosing diseases are made up of doctors with financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
He tells Kathryn Ryan the problem has got so bad some doctors are recommending that clinicians deliberately break the rules to avoid unnecessary diagnoses.
