The global drive to increase awareness of women’s health is being hijacked by major corporations promoting flawed or ineffective tests, treatments and technology, doctors and public health experts have warned.
[F]eminist health narratives are increasingly being co-opted by commercial interests to market products or interventions that are not backed by evidence, said researchers writing in the BMJ.
The surge in marketing risks harming women through inappropriate medicalisation, overdiagnosis and overtreatment, said Dr Tessa Copp, a public health researcher at the University of Sydney, Dr Minna Johansson, a GP in Gothenburg, and colleagues.
Companies have historically exploited health agendas by co-opting messaging about female autonomy to encourage women’s consumption of unhealthy commodities like tobacco and alcohol, they wrote. But this phenomenon has now expanded across women’s health.
They cited two examples of how feminist discourse was being hijacked to push non-evidence-based healthcare to healthy women.
The first was the anti-müllerian hormone (AMH) test, which measures levels of AMH in the blood, linked to the number of eggs in a woman’s ovaries.
The test does not reliably predict the chance of conceiving but fertility clinics and online companies globally are marketing it to the general public suggesting as much, the experts warned.
The second example cited was the view that all women having screening should be notified about their breast density, one of several independent risk factors for breast cancer.
Breast density notification can also increase women’s anxiety, confusion and intention to seek additional screening, while the unreliability of breast density measurement is another concern, they added.
In conclusion, they say: “We need to ensure the goals of feminist health advocacy are not undermined through commercially driven use of feminist discourse pushing non-evidence based care.”
Source: Global awareness of women’s health being ‘hijacked by vested interests’