Article July 29, 1991 Issue

Second Thought

Looking again at news and commentary

"Health care marketing seeks gain from pain" by Alison Bass—November 25, 1990

The Boston Globe

"To some observers... the marketing of health-related fears—through paid advertising and zealous public relations—is heightening Americans' already obsessive concern with their health. In concert with the constant diet of medical information supplied by the media, health-care marketing is raising the public's anxieties and their expectations of what medicine can do to unrealistic levels.

"Medical ethicists say such unrealistic expectations may eventually boomerang against the very people this kind of marketing is designed to serve: the medical establishment.

" 'When people realize there are limits to what medicine can do, there is bound to be some disillusionment with the medical establishment,' said Dr. Arthur Barsky, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist who has written about this phenomenon in his book, 'Worried Sick.'...

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