Washington Post
The last time you left your doctor’s office with a new prescription, you probably assumed she thoughtfully selected it as the best treatment for your condition. But if your doctor — like half of American physicians — accepts visits and the occasional free lunch from pharmaceutical representatives, there’s a good chance that drug choice was heavily biased.
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last month, the California Senate passed a bill that would ban drug companies from giving gifts to doctors.
It's a big enough problem that half of all doctors are getting the pharma bribes, and some states are enacting laws about it.
The study isn’t the first to highlight the disconcerting link between doctors’ prescribing habits and their interactions with pharmaceutical representatives. A 2016 ProPublica analysis found that physicians who received payments from drug and medical device companies were significantly more likely to prescribe high-cost branded medications. In another study, researchers found that a single drug-company-sponsored meal can make a physician more likely to prescribe an expensive brand-name cholesterol medication instead of a less expensive generic one.
They don't take you out to an expensive restaurant to be friendly, but because they know it works to influence doctors to prescribe more of their expensive product, instead of the generic version. Which is exactly what I said before.
https://theconversation.com/why-i-dont-see-drug-reps-a-gps-take-on-big-pharma-spruiking-32435Research says GPs find drug reps a convenient and timely source of information
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Are we told the whole truth about medicines by drug reps? The evidence says we are not. A recent study from the US, Canada and France found that only a small minority of drug rep visits included “minimally adequate safety information”. Another recent study from Australia and Malaysia found that information about medication risks was often missing.
The information is missing for the reason I said before: pharma reps aren't trained in medical fields, they're
marketing people recruited from a number of unrelated fields. So they only know as much as the pamphlet their company gave them says on it, thus if the company leaves out the safety data (which they do) then the rep cannot answer any other questions about it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1876413/Drug reps are selected for their presentability and outgoing natures, and are trained to be observant, personable, and helpful. They are also trained to assess physicians' personalities, practice styles, and preferences, and to relay this information back to the company.
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friendly physician makes the rep's job easy, because the rep can use the “friendship” to request favors, in the form of prescriptions. Physicians who view the relationship as a straightforward goods-for-prescriptions exchange are dealt with in a businesslike manner. Skeptical doctors who favor evidence over charm are approached respectfully, supplied with reprints from the medical literature, and wooed as teachers. Physicians who refuse to see reps are detailed by proxy; their staff is dined and flattered in hopes that they will act as emissaries for a rep's messages.
Bottom line, these reps are professional schmoozers, not medical professionals.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14955926 times)