Two Types of Rx Ads

There are two different types of ads I often see on TV these days that feature prescription medicines. One type promotes a newly introduced prescription drug suggesting to the potential user its benefits, while also indicating some of the drug's negative side effects (which sometimes includes "death"). The viewer is then urged to go to his or her physician and ask for the advertised drug.

Another type of ad also features prescription medicines, but in a much more negative light. These are the class-action lawsuit spots put out by law firms suing prescription companies over some of the nastier side effects of some medicines (also sometimes including "death"). The lawyers claim that anyone joining in on the suit won't have to pay them any fees if they lose, but I never hear them say whether the judge in the court won't force participants suing the companies to pay for court costs and the defendant's expenses. Of course, some of the cases have already been decided for the plaintiff and there is no risk of this happening, just an open invitation to sign up and join in on the spoils!

I have never felt at ease with the idea of medically untrained individuals choosing their own prescription medicine. Isn't this ignorance of medicine supposed to be the very reason they are going to a physician in the first place? Then again, I also realize that medical doctors probably don't know all that much about the actual drugs being hawked to them by aggressive salespeople (I almost always see one around whenever I'm paying my doctor a visit).

And to be perfectly blunt, although I know that certain prescription medicines are essential to maintaining some patients' health and even life, I wonder to myself (and now to you) how really necessary (or even desirable) many of them are. And how much of their sales are due to a manufactured, artificial sense of need created by advertising and the profit motive.