If a doll saved just one kid from abuse it would be worth it, but the data would be hard to establish I guess.
This sort of reminds me of the ongoing debate about violent video games increasing tendencies toward violence in gamers... the arguments would likely go on forever.
*EDIT*
You know, a thought comes to mind regarding this whole idea. I recognize that this is an unpopular and increasingly rare POV, but I think there is something to be said for recognizing that some impulses or urges or proclivities or what have you are simply unacceptable. They are unacceptable even if they are only in one's mind and never acted out...
This is not to say that anyone should beat the shit out of themselves and become incapacitated due to shame for one's thoughts and urges - but the standard modern/post-modern worldview leaves one in poverty as regards self-understanding. The standard fare we are given to work with and understand ourselves sets us immediately off in an unhelpful (if not altogether incorrect) course.
For many years I smoked cigarettes. I hated myself for it. I was so ashamed of myself and I imagined that everyone who saw me smoking thought of me as trash. The energy I put into hating myself and being ashamed, however, only seemed to strengthen the compulsion to smoke. What I had to learn in order to grow beyond that conundrum was that I was not my thoughts and urges. Shortly afterward, I was able to observe the desire to smoke and the related thoughts that triggered the desire to smoke and I became increasingly able to watch the urges pass over me until they were no more.
It is right to value health over short-term pleasure. That is wise. It is good that I continued to acknowledge this truth and not to discard it - but holding that value while behaving contrary to it caused me pain. Cognitive dissonance can help a person to find the energy to move in the right direction, but only if one holds to what is right and comes to disidentify with the aspects that lead them astray - and ultimately disidentification must come to encompass the entire personality structure. This is entirely foreign to modern/post-modern, western thinking.
What many people do instead of the above seems to me to often fall into two other camps. The first camp is the readily observable one of doing things that are at odds with what one knows to be right and constantly being in a state of agitation and dis-ease. That's why so many people talk all the time - more than half of what they are saying or doing is something to distract themselves from the pain of the cognitive dissonance they're trapped in. Like St. Paul they don't do what they know is right and they do what they hate. That's hell on earth.
A common second approach is to (at least attempt) to discard values that one knows to be right and true and replace them with a value system that endorses the thoughts/urges/behaviors. This only truly works if the impulses are enslaving enough because the impulse ultimately usurps the personality - the urges BECOME the person.
Fortunately it seems this doesn't happen all that often, but often enough to be vigilant about.
In our culture, since we identify with our proclivities so much, many of us get edgy when our wants and desires aren't accommodated by our environment. Then we act against dharma. And, again, channeling St. Paul - it is hard to kick against the pricks.
Dharma, man. Do your dharma and you get set free from the prison of wants, desires, and the whole shoddy shitshow of one's personality - which is really just a ramshackle shithole that, once you crawl out of it, you are glad to leave behind.
Or embrace your lusts and petty desires and wants and shrink down to a bunch of compulsions that ultimately strangle you and turn you into worse than nothing. Your choice.