SPOTLIGHT: Critics challenge direct-to-consumer TV ads for stent

Over the last several months, consumers have been viewing a 60-second television ad for Johnson & Johnson's Cypher stent which, of course, plays up its potential benefits. Now, two critics of the ad have published an article in The New England Journal of Medicine arguing that the ad does far too little to warn consumers about the potential dangers of receiving a stent. The authors, Dr. William E. Boden of the State University of New York at Buffalo's medical school, and Dr. George Diamond of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, question whether such high-risk procedures should be advertised directly to the public at all. Article