Sleepless in ... well, everywhere.(Have You Heard?)

The irony isn't lost on us. A few years ago, the buzz was all about drugs for erectile dysfunction. Now the ailment of the week is insomnia. Seems we're never satisfied with what goes on between dusk and dawn.

We don't take either of those conditions lightly. But we do question a business model that markets medical treatments as if they were hemlines. It starts with drugmakers hyping a problem, because the more we're all convinced that we have an ailment, the more readily we'll pop a pill to cure it. And hype it they do. The most heavily advertised prescription drug in the U.S. last year was Lunesta, a newer type of prescription sleep aid (see CR Health, page 48). Butterflies may be free, but moths aren't; Sepracor, the drug's manufacturer, doled out $227 million to float its animated Luna moth past consumers' eyes last year. All that fluttering worked: Sleep-deprived Americans spent about $329 million on the drug. Altogether, prescription insomnia medications brought pharmaceutical companies more than $2.7 billion in 2005.

Are that many more people tossing and turning today than five years ago? Probably not, though doctors agree that many who need help don't seek it. Are the new drugs dramatically more effective than the old? No. Research shows that the newer and older drugs are about the same. We think consumers deserve unbiased, accurate information about how well drugs work, their risks, and whether they're worth the cost. So in late 2004, Consumers Union launched Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs, a free Web site reachable through www.ConsumerReports.org/health. We present readable summaries of classes of drugs, comparing effectiveness, side effects, and cost. We ...