43(B)log  refers us to a NYT feature on doctors who give consumers incentives to post doctor-created ads as their own contributions to YouTube:

Trouble is, most marketing videos don’t announce that patients are compensated. Take Jiffy Reed, who posed for a video tribute on YouTube about Dr. Daniel Noor, a New York-based cosmetic dentist who straightened her smile with invisible braces. “I was so happy, I would have done anything,” Ms. Reed said. What the video doesn’t mention is that her physician whitened her teeth at no charge; it usually costs about $700.

Exactly right. Although the article quotes a couple physicians who generally object to unseemly nature of such advertisements, the core problem here is not a medical issue, it’s a consumer issue. Paid endorsements used for advertising that aren’t identified as such are generally illegal, and there is no medical exception to that.

My own view is that this problem, like a number of problems in the medical profession, are the result of lackadaisical enforcement by most state Boards of Medicine. If even just a handful of physicians were reprimanded for using paid endorsements that were made to appear spontaneous, there likely would not be much of a problem anymore.

If you were injured by medical malpractice, contact a Philadelphia medical malpractice attorney.