Maybe I’m a poor naive medical student, but the last time I checked physicians were professionals with professional responsibilities including, but not limited to, writing appropriate ‘scrips.

I’ve read the data that shows DTC advertising works by getting patients to come in asking for a certain drug. But that still doesn’t give me any reason to ban or restrict the advertising (assuming it is non-misleading). You want to regulate the content of the ads to make them non-misleading, go ahead.

But to blame DTC ads for over-medicating is to abrogate the mantle of professional that doctors so zealously protect. You can’t stand up and claim to be a healer with special skills to be valued and then turn around and cry about how you can’t actually use any of that skill to tell your patient they’re mistaken or stand up to a drug company and tell them to take a hike.

I’m for such a ban, and I wish it could take effect next week. IMO, it does not qualify as “education” for consumers, because it does not give nearly enough information. I swear, there are some ads–or have been in the not-too-distant past, which prompted me to ask my husband, “Did that give you any clue as to what conditions, exactly, that drug is supposed to be for?”

As for the $10B price tag, the quote I read in the linked article sure looked like guesswork to me; it could be more, it could be less. My question: Given the very high cost of TV advertising, how much would such a ban save the pharm’s?