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The Cult of Wellness: How a Booming Industry is Replacing Medicine with Marketing
And how money is fueling the anti-vax movement
The internet is filled with people promoting the wellness industry. From anti-vax stay-at-home mommies to fitness gurus and supplement peddlers, the online wellness industry is absolutely massive. Many of these people use the pharmaceutical industry as a foil for their positions. They claim that the pharmaceutical industry is out to make money, that many drugs and vaccines are bad, and that “natural” solutions are preferable. But for all of the hand-wringing over money and the size of large pharmaceutical companies, the wellness industry dwarfs them all.
When you dig into the numbers, a few surprising trends emerge. The wellness industry is orders of magnitude larger than the pharmaceutical industry. That is not something the TikTok promoters will tell you. While they are out there blasting the profits of pharmaceutical companies, they are a part of an industry that is four times larger than pharmaceuticals.
The global pharmaceutical industry was valued at around $1.6 trillion in 2023. The sector focuses on the development, production, and marketing of medications and medical treatments. $1.6 trillion sounds like a lot of money until you see the size of the global wellness…
