>Playing devil's advocate... doctors are neither omniscient nor perfect.
There's been some research into this subject, and, in this case, it would seem that you are indeed advocating for the devil. I haven't read any of the papers myself, but the stories I've heard via channels such as the Science-Based Medicine blog or PusCast suggest that drug advertising - both to doctors and direct to consumers - tends to result in both higher health care costs and poorer patient outcomes, because it increases the odds that a doctor will prescribe a more expensive and less safe or less effective (or at least no more safe or effective) drug.
It's supposedly down to the drug companies' incentive structures. Once a patent expires, they often start tweaking the molecule to come out with new drugs that behave similarly, but are chemically different enough to qualify for a new patent. They then sink a lot of money into trying to convince doctors to prescribe it instead. Their avenue for doing this is advertising, which doesn't have to clear nearly as high an evidentiary bar as any of the scientific channels for disseminating information.
There's been some research into this subject, and, in this case, it would seem that you are indeed advocating for the devil. I haven't read any of the papers myself, but the stories I've heard via channels such as the Science-Based Medicine blog or PusCast suggest that drug advertising - both to doctors and direct to consumers - tends to result in both higher health care costs and poorer patient outcomes, because it increases the odds that a doctor will prescribe a more expensive and less safe or less effective (or at least no more safe or effective) drug.
It's supposedly down to the drug companies' incentive structures. Once a patent expires, they often start tweaking the molecule to come out with new drugs that behave similarly, but are chemically different enough to qualify for a new patent. They then sink a lot of money into trying to convince doctors to prescribe it instead. Their avenue for doing this is advertising, which doesn't have to clear nearly as high an evidentiary bar as any of the scientific channels for disseminating information.