Every time I visit the United States, I am increasingly alarmed at the number of TV commercials for prescription drugs, which is something I never saw when I was a child. As a matter of fact, between 1994 and 1998, drug manufacturers increased their spending on direct-to-consumer advertising in the U.S. seven-fold.
Pharmaceuticals are a never-ending growth industry, but the reason they're seen that way has less to do with advances in medicine and more to do with consumers' changing perception of the gray area that falls between wellness and illness; a perception that has been molded by advertising. Weight-loss medications reinforce the belief that obesity is a disease. The last time I was in the States, I even saw an ad for a prescription drug that treats a condition I have never heard of -- discoloration of the fingernails.
This situation has become so prevalent that the development of new drugs often leads medical treatment rather than vice versa. Until the '50s and '60s, with the appearance of Miltown and Valium, most doctors didn't acknowledge anxiety as a medical condition, much less treat it. That's what psychiatrists were for. Nowadays, with the acceptance and ubiquity of antidepressants like Prozac and Zoloft (both of which are advertised extensively), Freud is as relevant as Aeschylus.