I get a few emails asking me what brand of ovulation kit or what herbal fertility potions I recommend. Sometimes the questions mention specific trade names, as in "What is your opinion on Brand XYZ fertility vitamins?" It puts me in a difficult situation, because most of the time, the truthful answer is that it will not help your fertility, but it won’t do much harm either except to your bank account. However, I can’t bring myself to say bad things about something unless of course I need to protect my readers and patients against blatant harm.

I once had a situation where a company that made a particular nutritional supplement that was allegedly helpful to sperm sent their pharm rep to my office to detail the product. I was asked if I regularly tell my patients about it. I gave a truthful answer which is that I will occasionally mention it if a patient specifically asks, but I will also tell them it has no proven universal benefit. If they want to try it, it might help, and there’s probably no harm other than a big waste of money and time. Well, a few weeks later, I was speaking with a referring OB/Gyn who told me, "Oh, by the way, I heard that you are recommending "product XYZ" to your patients."
"No. What ever gave you that idea?", I replied.
"The rep visited my office and told me that you specifically recommend it. Do you really think it’s helpful?"
I was angry for all of twenty seconds and was contemplating calling and chewing out the rep, but I decided it was not worth my time. Instead, I stopped mentioning their product and even got to the point of telling patients who ask, "I personally don’t have a good impression of that company’s ethics" and that usually ends the conversation.

Patients put trust in me and if I praise a particular product, they expect that I have researched it and that I would enthusiastically recommend it to my own family members.  I think professional endoresments or celebrity endorsements still work a lot better at manipulating gullible consumers’ decisions than they should, but the public is getting smarter over time. After all, does anybody really think that T-Mobile is a better cell phone plan just because Catherine Zeta-Jones researched it thoroughly and swears by it? Should I step up prescribing Viagara because baseball player, Rafael Palmeiro and NASCAR driver, Mark Martin both love it so?

Here is a funny blog article that shows to what extreme professional endorsements insult the intelligence of the consumer.

Keep a lookout in the future. If I tell you about a great new fertility product, it will either be because I believe in it, or because the company paid me $200 and a steak dinner to say so.