The Dangers of Direct to Consumer Advertising

In 2001, GlaxoSmithKline approved Paxil as an antidepressant and anti-anxiety drug. The company found a disorder called generalized anxiety disorder to treat it. It's both a sinister and brilliant move: They gave funding to patient advocacy groups to tell people that this is this lurking disorder; they also paid experts or physicians to say the same thing. So suddenly it's in the public discourse and in the media that people don't know that they have this. And they've created this whole consumer base for a drug like Paxil or whatever they're looking at.

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