Prescription medicines are very expensive, and advertising on TV and radio increases that cost. Most people are not knowledgeable about the biochemical effects and results from those medicines, yet the pharmaceutical industry is targeting the patient as a consumer, not the doctor as a specifically educated dispenser of medicine. The advertising dollars are huge, but they add to the consumer cost, encouraging people to ask for patent medicines that may not help them, and indeed, may harm them. Remember the phen-phen debacle, and the ongoing Amadourin, Vioxx, Trasylol, Amiodarone, Plavex, Celebrex lawsuits, and the increasing numbers joining the lawsuits against statin drugs? These were heavily advertised on television. medicines are not supposed to be popular items for consumption, they are each specifics for a small number of people's problems. TV and Radio advertising presents them like grocery items for consumption.