So Alix Spiegel reports on Morning Edition this morning on prescription drug marketing. Among the usual interviews with experts Alix has a gushy little talk with the marketing genius who helped to convince drug makers that you could sell powerful and possibly dangerous medicines like soap or fructose laden breakfast cereals.

And it turns out that this guy, Joe Davis now retired and living in Vermont, came up with this idea to promote an antihistamine, Seldane, in 1986. Which antihistamine was later withdrawn from the market because it caused nasty and really scary heart problems. Wonks Anonymous does not know that it actually killed anyone. It just sent them to the Emergency Room with heart attack symptoms.

Wonks Anonymous remembers asking a doctor at his Accountable Care Organization about Seldane in 1995. The doctor told him that they did not prescribe it because it caused heart problems. It was still being advertised at the time. It was withdrawn in 1997 after the drug maker came up with a substitute to fill the gap in its balance sheet and possibly the lives of allergy sufferers.

So we know that advertising for this drug brought in more users and more users certainly means more people getting a really bad scare and racking up some serious emergency room bills. Alix doesn't seem to want to ask Mr. Davis what he feels about all of that.

And, of course we have the whole Vioxx and Celebrex fiasco where drugs that had no particular advantage over Motrin and caused significant cardiovascular problems - that would be actual, fatal heart attacks - were pushed on the public with massive ad campaigns and falsified studies to prove their efficacy,

But nothing is heard from nine out of ten economists about the role that drug advertising has in raising medical costs and worsening our health.