Catch 22 for you. By reading this, you might get sick to your stomach which might make you want to visit your Doctor, only to get some drug prescribed only because a drug company paid for the hostess in the night club he visited last night!I just realized that my doctor resents (in good sense) my visits because she has to give me, all the information on medicines that she asks me to to take. I will research about these before I take them. Well I will let you read about the Congressional committees investigation into Drug companies' sales tactics held this morning. But then again there are GOOD doctors;
One doctor who says he has resisted the pitches of sales reps is Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. "I don't see drug reps and haven't seen them for probably 35 years,"
You will really understand the value of the above doctor when compared to the statement below!
"Quote from a senior marketing executive at Parke-Davis: "I want you out there every day selling Neurotonin. Neurotonin is more profitable than Accupril, so we need to focus on Neurotonin. Pain management, now that's money…. I don't want to see a single patient coming off Neurotonin before they've been up to at least 4,800 milligrams a day. I don't want to hear that safety crap, either."
A spokesman for Parke-Davis did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment."
To sell their drugs, pharmaceutical companies hire former cheerleaders and ex-models to wine and dine doctors, exaggerate the drug's benefits and underplay their side-effects, a former sales rep told a Congressional committee this morning.
Shahram Ahari, who spent two years selling Prozac and Zypraxa for Eli Lily, told a Senate Aging Committee chaired by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., that his job involved "rewarding physicians with gifts and attention for their allegiance to your product and company despite what may be ethically appropriate."
Ahari claims that drug companies like hiring former cheerleaders and ex-models, as well as former athletes and members of the military, many of whom have no background in science.
"On my first day of sales class, among 21 trainees and two instructors, I was the only one with any level of college-level science education," Ahari told ABCNews.com on Tuesday.
During their five-week training class, Ahari claims that instructors teach sales tactics, including how to exceed spending limits for important clients, being generous with free samples to leverage sales, using friendships and personal gifts to foster a "quid pro quo" relationship, and how to exploit sexual tension.
"The nature of this business is gift-giving," says Ahari. He claims that he's heard stories about sales reps helping to pay the cost of a doctor's swimming pool and another doctor who was routinely taken to a nightclub where a hostess was paid to keep him company.
tag: Drug Trials, Drug Sales, pharmaceutical companies, Eli Lily, Parke-Davis,
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