Big Wellness—It’s the New Big Pharma
This week on The Doctor Is In we will be discussing the rise of Big Wellness. For decades the general public has been concerned about Big Pharma. Yes, they make the medications and vaccines needed to keep you healthy but they also do it for profit. Their motivation for research and development is not solely altruism. There has been a healthy amount of skepticism brought into public discourse about how pharmaceutical companies function.
We have also seen an unhealthy amount of skepticism enter the public discourse surrounding Big Pharma when discussing vaccines. mRNA vaccines were a game-changing pharmaceutical development which allowed for rapid production of a covid vaccine during the Covid-19 pandemic. But the amount of misinformation and fear that were spread about them led to more hospitalizations and deaths from the virus because people were afraid to get vaccinated despite having access to it.
There is a general consensus that Big Pharma is one of the world’s most lucrative and influential industries with an estimated annual profit of 1.7 trillion dollars [1]. And yet there is one industry worth even more than Big Pharma that has not yet been recognized by the general population in the same way—Big Wellness. The global wellness market is worth 6.8 trillion dollars [2] And while it contains a variety of different departments, such as weight loss, personal care and beauty, and wellness tourism, it significantly out-earns big Pharma (over three-fold).
And yet there does not seem to be the same level of skepticism being levied at this industry as there is at the pharmaceutical industry. While many people anecdotally will express concerns about the evidence behind certain wellness products or trends, our governments do not regulate natural health supplements and other wellness products to the same level of scrutiny as our pharmaceutical companies. And there is often the thought that if something is natural, it is inherently safer than a medical alternative such as a medication.
This is simply not the case. Natural supplements can still lead to side effects or interactions with other supplements or medications. So it is important for us to look at Big Wellness and ask similar questions to that of Big Pharma—where is the evidence that this works? Where is the evidence that it is safe? Where is the evidence that it is worth the price I will pay for it? These are important questions to ask about all medical treatments, whether prescribed or not, whether natural or not, whether developed by Big Pharma or Big Wellness.
People’s critical thinking skills should always be online. Something being natural does not automatically make it better or worse than anything else. We need to apply the same questions to natural products as man-made ones. Our health and our wallets depend on it.
[1] https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/6231995/growth-opportunities-in-global-pharmaceutical
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