As someone with deep experience in this field once explained to me, "The big drug companies don't sell cures. They sell diseases." By which he of course meant they sell the idea of the disease, for which -- if whipped up to be scary and believable enough -- the consumer won't hesitate to reach out to "cure."
"As late as 1975, nursing textbooks did not include herpes as it was considered no worse than a common cold. After the development of acyclovir in the 1970s, the drug company Burroughs Wellcome launched an extensive marketing campaign that publicized the illness, including creating victim's support groups."
The disease model is a horribly leaky abstraction for behavioral and personality problems. There is a world of difference between "I have a condition, with both benefits and drawbacks, which I need to manage" and "I have a disease that needs to be treated with medication". High-functioning autism has begun to be understood as belonging more to the first camp than the second; I would hope someday that we view many more things that way as well.
One of the oldest examples of this phenomenon I can think of is how halitosis wasn't considered nearly as much of a problem before the promotion of Listerine as a cure for it in the 1920s.
I must respectfully disagree, halitosis (bad breadth for those wondering) was already considerer a problem in 1550BC and a valid reason in the Talmud for breaking marriage. Hardly small potatoes.
You can turn your perspective on this the other way as well, though. Do you know how hard it is to sell cryonics, life-extension research, etc? Because, you know, "death isn't that big a deal."
Sometimes, a horrible thing goes unrecognized because we've all just learned to live with how horrible it is, and to stop wasting emotional energy despairing about it. When a cure does then come about... some company has to remind people that the problem is a problem in the first place.
Some "non-problems" are Emperors wearing some very compelling New Clothes.
