Direct-to-consumer advertising is one of the most significant recent developments in the marketing of prescription drugs. The rise of DTC ad also raises new problems. DTC ad undermines the traditional legal rules governing transmission of information to patients. Current regulations require drug manufacturers to provide information and warnings directed at the prescribing physician, who in turn must warn the patient under common law tort doctrine. A drug manufacturer is generally not liable for failing to directly warn the consumer of potential adverse consequences of prescribed drugs. This “learned intermediary” rule follows from the assumption that the prescribing physician is best able to proper1y communicate the relevant risks to the patient and most able to understand a complex warning when deciding whether the stated risks outweigh the benefits for a particular patient. But, when drug manufacturers advertise directly to consumers, they have no duty under current regulations to provide a warning tailored to the consumer, and bypass the intermediary assumed by the traditional legal duties. This artic1e examines current tort doctrine and regulation relevant to DTC prescription drug ad and draws three conclusions. These current regulations are inadequate to cope with the issues raised by DTC ad. Specifically, they present no uniform framework for realistic depictions of a drug’s benefits and dangers to a lay audience.