Pediatricians seek ban on primetime erectile dysfunction ads

A group of pediatricians have banded together to attack drug companies like Pfizer for promoting their erectile dysfunction pills during primetime family viewing hours.

Kids today are bombarded with inappropriate sexual messages and images, the AAP committee said; everything from graphic sexual lyrics in songs to ubiquitous erectile dysfunction drug advertisements that air all hours of the day and night.

Meanwhile, the paper notes, television resists running advertisements about birth control -- including emergency contraceptives -- but erectile dysfunction ads appear during family TV hours. The ads, the doctors say, can be confusing to younger children and should appear only after 10 p.m. Others have complained about the number of ED ads on TV.

"Television, film, music, and the Internet are all becoming increasingly sexually explicit, yet information on abstinence, sexual responsibility, and birth control remains rare," they write. [LA Times]

Ah, right, abstinence. (Here we were thinking the pediatricians were standing up for all the parents who are embarrassed by having to explain why daddy has to take the same blue pills seen in the commercial every night before going to bed.) While we agree information on birth control is hard to come by, abstinence education has proven unable to solve the above problems.

And, of course, once they ban those commercials in primetime, they're going to have to find something else to complain about. Their opponents might pull out the old line "if you don't like what you're hearing, change the channel... or get a damn DVR."

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