What has happened to the medical vocation? Why do some
doctors (MD'S) often slackly prescribe prescription drugs
without care and will not provide the patient with
information for risk-free and effective natural products?
The following segments were taken from an article in the
Boston Globe Which ran December 15, 2002:
During the past six months, Dr. Eugene Fierman and his two
colleagues were showered with offers worth thousands of
dollars.
At least once a week, the nation's pharmaceutical firms
invited them for "educational evenings" at some of the
city's priciest restaurants, including cocktail and dinner
at Radius paid for by Pfizer, an insomnia discussion at
Locke-Ober, and a depression talk at Maison Robert - both
on Wyeth's tab.
Some pharmaceutical companies wanted to hire them as
temporary advisers, including Forest Pharmaceuticals, which
promised the doctors $500 each for listening to a Saturday
morning talk about the firm's new antidepressant, Lexapro,
at a Cambridge hotel and then providing "advice and
feedback."
And occasionally drug company employees dropped off at the
doctor's rented office at Faulkner Hospital small gifts: a
box of cookies from the Wyeth salesman, four classical CD's
from the Pfizer representative.
With investigations into the industry's sales tactics
growing, and a new voluntary code of conduct in place that
stresses educating rather than entertaining doctors,
Fierman, Dr. Ann Potter, and Dr. Gregory Harris - like many
of their colleagues throughout the medical profession -
said sales representatives now rarely offer the most lavish
gifts that were routine in past years: theater tickets,
golf trips, and resort weekends.
Instead, drug makers are paying for or offering more
"consulting opportunities", even for one evening,
continuing medical education courses, and dinners billed as
"educational events" with specialist speakers. At the
Globe's request, the three doctors kept track of
pharmaceutical-related invitations and offers they received
over a five-month period. The material was enough to
overflow a 1-foot-square, 2-foot-high box.
"It's hard to resist all this money and free stuff FL
oating around," said Harris. "But it's a slippery slope,
and I don't want to be in the position of doing something
that crosses the line."
The shift in the tactics drug companies are using to
establish close relationships with doctors was occurring
even before the industry adopted the new guidelines in
July. The amount of money pharmaceutical firms spent on
meetings and events, including continuing medical
education, teleconferences, dinners, symposia, and
get-togethers with physician advisers, more then doubled
over four years to $2.1 billion in 2001, according to
Verispan, a company that tracks promotional spending.
Drug makers say these classes and gatherings provide
physicians with crucial information about medicines that
could help their patients - and allow doctors to speak to
each other about their experiences. But Dr. Marcia Angell,
former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, said
the danger is that companies simply disguise marketing as
education, while slanting presentations toward their own
products and helping to increase health-care costs.
"These companies are in the business of selling drugs,
period," Angell said.
Physician leaders also are concerned about what they see as
a rise in consulting and question whether doctors are
providing meaningful advice to the companies - something
required by the new guidelines - or are merely being paid
large sums to listen to a sales pitch. And federal law
prohibits companies from offering doctors cash inducements
to prescribe their drugs. Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of
Public Citizen Health Research Group in Washington, D.C.,
said some consulting fees have gotten so high that he
believes they border on illegal inducements. He has
referred several cases to the US inspector general.
With the focus on drug industry marketing intensifying,
doctors are increasingly concerned about their interactions
with sales reps, and some are taking steps to limit their
visits - or keep them out of their offices entirely. But
that - Fierman, Harris, and Potter discovered - is not so
easy.
"You can't totally drop out of this crazy system, " Fierman
said.
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1 comment:
This article would have been more interesting (and relevant) if there were not a bunch of internet ads (i.e., an attempt to influence sales by you) as hyperlinks on your site.
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