But I don't take it because anybody's commercial persuaded me to do so. I take it because Dr. Bernnardo prescribed it for me. I figure that with his talent, education, special training, long experience and ongoing study of the medical journals, my sawbones has the knowledge and background to know if a serious prescription drug is right for me or not, whether it will make me chipper as a colt, or bring on an irreversible seizure that sends me, drooling and gasping, to my final reward. Therein lies my puzzlement about a growing practice of advertising prescription drugs to the general public. But I suspect a big reason the drug companies reach so far into their deep pockets for advertising dollars is to get people to assess their own symptoms, decide on their own that they need the advertised drugs and then prevail on their doctors to write the prescriptions.
Patients thus become associate physicians, sort of sous chefs in the kitchen of remedies.
The drug companies, eager to preserve their profitable prescription franchises, yet anxious to create grass-roots groundswells of demand, are having it both ways, using patients to put marketing pressure on professionals. I have no idea how much expensive network advertising adds to the cost of the Prevacid I depend upon. Many advertising advocates argue that advertising can actually lower the price of an advertised product. Increased demand, they say, means more sales, production in greater quantities, and lower end-cost through the economies of scale. IN the pharmaceutical business, this is nonsense.