One of this week's New Yorker articles that's posted for free for a week online is this interesting read on dietary supplements. An odd side effect of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act is that supplements you buy at the local drugstore are marketed with all sorts of extravagant claims while drugs you can usually obtain only from a doctor are advertised on TV in the most cryptic, uninformative manner ("Ask your doctor about Levitra," says the voiceover, while an old man and woman ride horses down the beach).
Do a little digging and you'll find that most pills advertised on TV seem to deal with high cholesterol or erectile dysfunction. Some hearty soul put the top remedies for the latter through their paces for Wired magazine this month in a piece titled Hard Drugs.
The bravery of journalists always inspires.