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Turn on your television and you will see them everywhere - advertisements for prescription drugs. We don't seem to think much of them now, but just a few short years ago, these ads were unheard of. The problem is that these ads are not targeting physicians and medical professionals who will be prescribing the drugs after a proper diagnosis is made. These ads are targeting the end user and telling them to "ask your doctor if this is right for you."

One of the many problems with this form of advertising is that patients are going to their physicians and asking for these drugs by name based on a 30 or 60 second spot they saw during an episode of their favorite sitcom.

This problem is compounded by the fact that too often physicians do not do their due diligence in arriving at diagnoses. Having been in many doctors' offices myself and seen these practices firsthand, I can safely say that things need to change. A patient comes in and says "I've been feeling depressed a lot lately." and the doctor MAYBE asks one or two follow up questions, then writes a prescription or hands out some samples saying "try these."

What is usually not known to the patient is that the drug manufacturer sends sales representatives to go pitch these drugs to the busy physician. It is usually the responsibility of the pharmaceutical rep to keep the doctor's sample cabinet stocked. Often times the physician only knows what the sales reps have told him in their brief encounters, and what he too has seen on television.

In the case of Lipitor, a print ad featuring the inventor of the artificial heart, Dr. Robert Jarvik, boasts that "Lipitor reduces the risk of heart attack by 36%." An asterisk on the ad directs you to the small print, which states that in one large clinical study 3% of the patients on the placebo had heart attacks compared to only 2% of the experiment group that was given Lipitor. The study lasted for forty months, and in that forty months out of every 100 people involved in the study three people on the placebo and two people on Lipitor had heart attacks - a difference of only one per 100 people. This means that to prevent one person from having a heart attack, 100 people had to be on the drug for almost three and a half years. These are terrible numbers compared to most other pharmaceuticals out there, however many people reading the print ad will be swayed by the celebrity endorsement and the impressive 36% figure, prompting them to go ask their doctor for the drug. Patients

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