This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor.

I welcome Dr. Ronald Dwork, writing most recently at Civitas Outlook for Civitas Institute, about two terms that he will help me understand over-medicalization

and over-diagnosis. They're related but not. And it's a phenomenon that Ronald is found in a new

book, and this is a review, his essay in Civitas is a review of this book. The Age of Diagnosis, how our obsession

with medical labels is making us sicker by Suzanne O'Sullivan. It's on Amazon right now.

Dr. Dwork and Ron, a very good evening to you. Thank you for this. We'll begin with overdiagnosis

and your recognition of it as something that is either

fresh or available to us since our articulation is now enhanced by social media and the

internet. What is overdiagnosis? Good evening to you, Ronald. Thank you. Overdiagnosis is where people are

with everyday medical problems that would not even have been considered medical problems

years ago are now considered medical problems and herded into diagnostic categories.

It usually happens in two forms. One is new diagnoses are created and they have been over the last

20 or 30 years. Some examples

are chronic Lyme disease, the other Danes syndrome, some genetic disorders. And others are

heard into old diagnoses. So the old diagnostic categories are expanded to include these other

people who would not have been included in diagnostic categories, say, 40 years ago.

That might be, for example, asthma, diabetes, polysistic ovary disease, so on.

Overdiagnosis, is it a function of specialization?

Are we getting more and more articulate and demanding more articulation?

For example, as children were taught to say, I think I have a cold.

Now, that can be broken down in many directions.

Is that overdiagnosis when you describe the specific trouble that a child is having?

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