Resisting Expanding Disease Empires: Why We Shouldn’t Label Healthy People as Sick

Ginger Spruill (L) of Piney Orchard has her blood pressure checked by nurse Jean Sprinks of Odenton, during Kimbrough Ambulatory Care Center's annual Women's Health Fair in Fort Meade on June 2, 2012. Spruill's husband is Staff Sgt. William Spruill. Jen Rynda/Fort George G. Meade Public Affairs Office/Flickr, CC BY

You might have heard the frightening news last year suggesting half of all Americans had some form of diabetes. A survey in the journal JAMA was covered extensively, including by NBC, WebMD, and the Los Angeles Times.

But as the HealthNewsReview blog later pointed out, almost none of the media coverage raised questions about the expanding definition of diabetes or the controversial new “pre-diabetes,” claimed to afflict close to 90 million Americans.

Part of the expanding empires of disease, the creation of new “pre-conditions” is turning millions of people into patients across the globe. We now have pre-osteoporosis, pre-hypertension, and pre-dementia—and, like pre-diabetes, all of them are controversial.

The creation of new 'pre-conditions' is turning millions of people into patients.