Farewell to the pressure kids

Ray Moynihan writes in the BMJ on the epidemic of pre-hypertension. At it’s simplest this is best described as a pre-disease. Your blood pressure isn’t high yet but it’s on the upper level of normal.

You don’t have to look far to see whose interest such a category might serve.

Until now the definition of what constitues a condition or pre-condition, and the guidelines for treating it, have been left largely to senior members of the medical profession and their esteemed societies, often meeting in drug-company sponsored forums like the coming Vienna conference. But for people like Professor Furberg, the profession has become too close to industry. He wonders whether it may time for society at large to take more of a role in deciding who should be classified as sick.