by Martha Rosenberg
huffingtonpost.com

Before “Ask Your Doctor” ads on TV, all you knew about prescription drugs were creepy ads in a JAMA at the doctor’s office with a lot of fine print. Even if you knew the name of a drug, you’d never ask your doctor for it because that would be self-diagnosing and cheeky for a patient.

Flash forward to the late 1990s when direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising, drug websites and online drug sales came on board and self-diagnosing and demanding pills became medicine-as-usual for many doctors and patients.

The DTC/web perfect storm didn’t just sell drugs like Claritin, Prozac and the purple pill. It sold the diseases to go with them like seasonal allergies, GERD and depression. It sold risk of diseases like heart events for which you’d take a statin like Lipitor, osteoporosis for which you’d take a bone drug like Boniva and asthma attacks for which you’d use a second asthma drug like Advair. Of course, by the very definition of prevention, you didn’t know if the drugs were working but you weren’t paying out of pocket anyway so what the hay.

Thanks to DTC advertising, people began taking seizure drugs like Topamax and Lyrica for everyday pain or headaches and antipsychotics — hello? — for everyday blues or mood problems. They started taking monoclonal antibodies made from genetically engineered hamster cells like Humira when they didn’t have to. And even though FDA mandated risk disclosures — brain bleeds, sudden death, difficulty breathing, stomach bleeding, liver failure, kidney failure, muscle breakdown, fainting, hallucinations, the drugs perversely sold more either because ad frequency itself sells or because people like the identity in having a disease.

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