I guess they do not do all those TV adds for nothing.

Edit for Brevity and more is at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/26/AR2005042
601624.html

Will need to sign in.
........................................................................

Doctors Influenced By Mention Of Drug Ads
Offbeat Study Finds Familiar Brand Name Can Evoke Diagnosis

By Shankar Vedantam and Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 27, 2005; Page A01

Actors pretending to be patients with symptoms of stress and fatigue
were five times as likely to walk out of doctors' offices with a
prescription when they mentioned seeing an ad for the heavily promoted
antidepressant Paxil, according an unusual study being published today.

The study employed an elaborate ruse -- sending actors with fake
symptoms into 152 doctors' offices to see whether they would get
prescriptions. Most who did not report symptoms of depression were not
given medications, but when they asked for Paxil, 55 percent were given
prescriptions, and 50 percent received diagnoses of depression.
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The study adds fuel to the growing controversy over the estimated $4
billion a year the drug industry spends on such advertising. Many public
health advocates have long complained about ads showing happy people
whose lives were changed by a drug, and now voices in Congress, the Food
and Drug Administration and even the pharmaceutical industry are asking
whether things have gone too far.

Nearly every industrialized country bans such advertising, and
physicians said the new study raises new questions.

"It is a haphazard approach to health promotion that is driven primarily
by the pharmaceutical industry's interest in turning a profit," said
Matthew F. Hollon, an internist at the University of Washington in
Seattle, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study in today's
Journal of the American Medical Association. "The most overlooked
problem in the health care system today is the extent to which it is
permeated by avarice."