I came across a new term the other day: “Disease Mongers.”

I thought at first it was another way of saying hypochondriac, and in a way it is. But instead of someone thinking they have all kinds of health problems (the hypochondriac), the disease monger makes you think that you have all kinds of health problems. I guess you could call a disease monger a “hypochondriacer”.

Who are the disease mongers? Those who stand to benefit from convincing people that they are sick. This can include a lot of groups and individuals, who benefit in different ways. But the clearest way to spot them, as usual, is to follow the money. The biggest group, in terms of sheer size & profits, is the pharmaceutical industry, which seems to come up with more pills for more obscure conditions every year. To do this, of course, they need to work hand-in-glove with the medical industry, research organizations, the Food & Drug Administration, and whoever else has a vested interest in disease mongering.

Obviously, medical research, and advances in medical technology are crucial for the advancement of human civilization and the alleviation of suffering. Yes, and corporate capitalism helps this advancement by centralizing funds into focused research, and this is done by pursuing the overall process of profit-investment-expansion. So one is tempted to say that socially detrimental byproducts of this process are necessary evils. Not just tempted; we are blungeoned with this message by the disease mongers every day. As if it were a cut-and-dry, all-or-nothing proposition. But is it?

These ideas are at the heart of John Le Carre’s “The Constant Gardener,” a well-constructed spy novel that was recently made into a movie. In the novel, it is pretty clear that a huge pharmaceutical company is doing evil things. The company reps and their lobbyists/lackeys/bought politicians use the “necessary evils” argument. The greater good is served even if a few eggs get broken in the making of the health omelette (or some such bland metaphor for killing people). Le Carre paints the situation with a stark brush, but we all know that such evil things are done in the name of progress all the time.

In general I think it is better to avoid good vs. evil, us vs. them frameworks. In other words, it’s better to use a smaller brush to paint the picture, with greater detail and shading. Having said that, I do think there are disease mongers. One could say that it is a general tendency, a phase that our society is going through. But this phase is carried out by individuals, real people who make real choices with real moral ramifications. That’s where the Hall Of Shame comes in. Within the large corporations, the contracted lobbying groups and PR firms, the advertising agencies, the medical organizations, and other businesses that make a profit from the process of disease mongering, within all these faceless bureaucracies are real people who make and implement decisions.

These individuals, when they fight the status quo of profits before people, when they work to alleviate preventable human suffering, deserve our respect and gratitude. But when they just play the game, help the faceless bureaucracies profit from human suffering, when they not only don’t try to change the system but actively profit from its corrupt practices, then they deserve our scorn and anger. It’s important to remember this scorn and anger, for it serves as a collective pressure exerted on these individuals when they are exposed. Exposure is only the first step. High-priced lawyers, dissembling, obfuscation, all that soon follows exposure. The corrupt individuals know how to manipulate the bureaucratic slowness of our judicial system, dragging things out with the hope that the public’s memory and attention span are short. All too often this is true, and the criminal acts of money-grubbing suits get only a slap on the wrist.

But I’m not saying anything you don’t already know. The important thing here is to isolate the disease mongers, to expose immorality of exploiting human suffering for profit, and not to buy into it ourselves. One way to reduce the power of the disease mongers is to be less susceptible to their hypochondria-inducing propaganda.