The latest television ad for a vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV) shows a mother reading to her young daughter. The daughter is gazing trustingly at the mother. Are the two of them reading a children's book? No, they are reading a brochure for the vaccine.

"Side effects include pain, swelling, itching, redness of the infection site, fever, nausea, or dizziness," the actress playing the mother recites to her fictitious daughter, reading from the brochure with a carefree tone in her voice. It's as if the drug company is encouraging us to make a sales pitch to our children on the benefits of taking drugs. Although I'm an advocate of free speech, I call on our government to ban these types of ads.

The explosion of drug advertisements hitting the airwaves is my latest outrage. It's not just my imagination that the number of drug ads is increasing. According to the US General Accounting Office, spending on direct-to-consumer drug advertising in the United States from 1997 to 2005 increased from $1.1 billion to $4.2 billion. And it's not just the fact that drug companies are advertising that irritates me. It's the recklessness in the way they do so. The drug companies are dying for us to get sick.

Should drug ads be banned, or is this an infringement on free speech? Take our poll.

If the increasing number of drug ads hitting the airwaves isn't nauseating enough, the tactics the drug companies are using in the ads to persuade us we need drugs is even worse. The ads attempt to make it cool to be sick and use prescription drugs. The ad campaigns for several of these drugs are abbreviating the names of these diseases by using cool-sounding acronyms. Just last weekend, I saw TV ads for drugs claiming to treat RA (rheumatoid arthritis), RLS (restless legs syndrome), and my personal favorite, ED (erectile dysfunction). It's now cool to have ED!

Yet another tactic is to enlist celebrities to push the drugs in advertisements. You might remember the ads several years ago featuring former ice skating star Dorothy Hamill for the Vioxx osteoarthritis drug that was later pulled from the market after research indicated it increased the risk of heart attack and stroke. The celebrity tactic continues today, with actress Sally Field pitching an osteoporosis drug and former pro football coach Mike Ditka pitching an impotence drug. I'd list the possible side effects of taking those drugs, but I only have a limited amount of space for this editorial.

Our government is at least working on this issue, although whether anything gets done remains to be seen. The US Senate passed a drug safety overhaul bill on May 9, and as I write this, a companion bill that would be combined with the Senate bill is making its way through the House of Representatives. The Senate legislation addresses consumer complaints about misleading drug advertising by setting up a voluntary program in which the FDA would review television commercials before they air.

The mainstream media and medical publications have done a decent job covering the topic as Congress continues to work on legislation like this. I recommend an article in the May 31, 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Drug Risks and Free Speech—Can Congress Ban Consumer Drug Ads?" (content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/356/22/2236/). The article addresses whether a ban on these types of ads would be consistent with the US Constitution's protection of free speech. Meanwhile, our Web site now includes newsfeeds from Reuters to keep you even more informed. Use these tools to inform yourself and your patients so your practice can become an advertisement for the many benefits of natural health care.

Daryl Lubinsky