Very Interesting Read - How Drug Reps Make Friends and Influence Doctors

I recently threw down this link on another thread, but it's such a detailed and eye-opening article, it deserves to stand on its own.

 

    It's my job to figure out what a physician's price is. For some it's dinner at the finest restaurants, for others it's enough convincing data to let them prescribe confidently and for others it's my attention and friendship...but at the most basic level, everything is for sale and everything is an exchange.

 

    —Shahram Ahari

 

Shahram Ahari is a former pharmaceutical sales representative for Eli Lilly.  This work was supported by a grant from the Attorney General Prescriber and Consumer Education Grant Program, created as part of a 2004 settlement between Warner-Lambert, a division of Pfizer, and the Attorneys General of 50 States and the District of Columbia, to settle allegations that Warner-Lambert conducted an unlawful marketing campaign for the drug Neurontin (Gabapentin) that violated state consumer protection laws

 

If you click on the figures at the top of the page, you'll see "Table 1. Tactics for Manipulating Physicians" 

 

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040150

 

Great share. Thank you

That explains a lot. Thank you!

More proof that the entire system, from the manufacturer all the way down to the mini-skirted sales rep, is about deception, manipulation and making money.  None of it has a damned thing to do with treating disease or improving the health of the public.  Rotten to the core.

Ain't that the truth, Photo!  And it doesn't stop at the sales rep ...  it continues to the doctor (in many cases) and even the pharmacist. 

It truly is quite horrid!

 

This article out of Canada:

 

Pharmacists speak out on need to ‘cherry-pick’ low-risk patients to meet quotas for billable services

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/medication-reviews-may-miss-patients-who-need-them-1.3005870