"The notion that medical knowledge should only be in the hands of a special class of specially trained persons (i.e., physicians), who should not have to answer questions is silly."
Didn't say that, don't mean that. I go to docs that get me the results I require, i.e., fixed or as close to it as possible. I expect them to be up on the latest treatments - drugs, hardware, whatever. If they don't get the job done, I go elsewhere.
I simply have reservations about applying "Madison Avenue" to selling drugs. Because that's what it is - increasing demand based on patients seeing the ads. Docs see *a lot* that the non-physician can't possibly see. And *that's* what I pay for - his/her experience. I'm a bright guy, but I don't work with sick people 10 hours a day.
I don't have a problem with looking stuff up - I do it all the time. But I think the notion that a layman can have more than a rough idea of what's up in medicine is silly.
Obviously, if a drug company says something that is an outright lie about its product, then that's fraud, and should be treated as such.
However, I think (based on casual observation) that drug-related illnesses caused by a closed-system of medical care have been greater than those caused by an open-system (or, as you put it, a "Madison Avenue" approach). For example, thalidomide in England, and DES here in the U.S., were prescribed with the best of intentions by experts.
In sum, I believe you can't have one freedom without the other: if you want the unprecedented freedom to look stuff up on the Internet (including, by the way, the reputations and backgrounds of MDs, as well as any litigation pending against them), you must also accept a company's right to hawk its latest pill. Drug companies are now posting the results of their double-blind studies on new drugs. That's good news. It's now up to you and me -- the market -- to caution others not to take Madison Avenue at face value, but to treat all advertisements with skepticism, and to question those in a position to provide answers about drug-related ads: the doctor. Of course, if the doctor merely resents having to answer these sorts of questions to begin with, then that's his problem; obviously, he's got a poor bedside manner (he needs some remedial training to help him cope with the new doctor/patient relationship, which, today, is more like supplier-of-service/buyer-of-service, and no longer like God/obedient-subject).
The position of medicine today is similar to the position of religion in the 17th century when the field of comparative or critical theology was established. Suddenly, the clergy were put in the embarrassing position of having to answer QUESTIONS from lay persons about apparent contradictions in the Bible and Church dogma. How awful! Still, if what is good for the soul benefits from a free market of ideas, then the same must be true of what is good for the body.