GLANCE AT ANY NEWSPAPER, magazine, or television program and you would think that disease is an inevitable part of life—that it’s not a question of if, but when, most people will need the latest medicines to hold at bay an array of diseases. The aggressive marketing of prescription drugs has come into question, and that’s good news. Those in the medical profession have also begun to question the benefits of constantly placing images and descriptions of disease before the public. For example, in The New York Times “Room for Debate” commentary (August 4, 2009), Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School, wrote, “Direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising does exactly what it is intended to do—increase sales for drug companies. Increasingly, it does that by promoting medical conditions, as well as drugs. If the industry can convince essentially normal people that minor complaints require long-term drug treatment, its market will grow.”