Drug rep

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Drug reps use psychological tactics to successfully influence doctors' prescribing habits Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Eli Lilly drug rep Shahram Ahari. Ahari, no longer a drug rep, co-wrote the paper with Adriane Fugh-Berman, associate professor of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. The paper is based on conversations between Ahari and Fugh-Berman, who researches pharmaceutical marketing. The writers report that drug reps are trained to gather as much personal information as possible about the doctors to whom they are promoting pharmaceuticals -- from birthdays and hobbies to religious affiliation.

Armed with the articles and having hopefully scheduled a 20 minute appointment (so the doc can't escape), I play dumb and have the doc explain to me the significance of my article," wrote Ahari. The drug rep then asks the doctor to prescribe the medication based on his or her own explanation (to the sales rep) of the journal articles. Yet another tactic, reserved for doctors who prefer a competing drug, is described by Ahari: "We force the doctors to constantly explain their prescribing rationale, which is tiresome.

Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer Shannon Brownlee See book keywords and concepts

At the front lines of this massive marketing campaign stands the drug company representative, or drug rep, usually a handsome young man or shapely young woman who has been recruited more for his or her good looks and outgoing personality than for any aptitude in science or medicine. Drug reps have been calling on doctors since the nineteenth century, but over the past two decades their numbers have increased dramatically, doubling between 1996 and 2001 to an army of ninety thousand, which makes about one rep for every nine doctors.

Kate Howard began working as a drug rep in 2003, after returning to the small town in the Midwest where she grew up in order to help her mother care for her eighty-year-old father. A petite woman with long dark hair and a voluptuous figure, Howard is charming, smart, and profanely funny, a chatterbox who can strike up a conversation with anyone. After getting a Ph.D. in archaeology, Howard wound up working as a sales rep for gin maker Charles Tanqueray. When she learned about a job opening for a drug rep back home, she figured selling drugs couldn't be all that different from selling booze.

The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S. See book keywords and concepts

The article further detailed how a sales force of 100,000 drug reps (one drug rep per 2.5 targeted physicians) provides "rationed doses of samples, gifts, services, and flattery" to those physicians who are likely to prescribe the rep's drug. "Every word, every courtesy, every gift, every piece of information provided is carefully crafted," say the authors, "not to assist doctors or patients, but to increase market share for targeted drugs." Should physicians refuse to meet with a rep, "their staff is dined and flattered in hopes that they will act as emissaries for a rep's message.

Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer Shannon Brownlee See book keywords and concepts

When she learned about a job opening for a drug rep back home, she figured selling drugs couldn't be all that different from selling booze. Her first few months were spent working for TAP Pharmaceutical Products, selling the antacid Prevacid and an atypical antipsychotic that was known to cause heart murmurs. Then she was recruited by Pfizer, the biggest drug company in the world. After a six-week training course, the newly minted Pfizer rep was given a company car, a base salary of fifty thousand dollars, and three drugs to cover, including Celebrex, the main competitor of Vioxx.

The gifts aren't attached to an explicit quid pro quo, says Michael Oldani, a former drug rep turned academic. Now a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Oldani worked for Pfizer for nine years, until 1998, when he suffered a crisis of conscience. He entered graduate school in anthropology at Princeton and wrote his dissertation on the anthropology of selling pharmaceuticals. His thesis is a gold mine of insight into the game of give-and-take in which doctors and reps engage.

Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau is a former rep who carried the bag for nine years for Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson before quitting to write and direct Side Effects, an independent film about a fictional drug rep. She recalls that the pressure on reps to hit their quotas was intense. "If Pfizer was having a dinner at a really nice restaurant, you had to come up with [Green Bay] Packers tickets—and a bus to the game," she says. As reps upped the gift-giving ante, doctors began feeling entitled to increasingly luxurious favors.

She'd lasted only nine months as a drug rep. For companies, the payoff for recruiting doctor-speakers can be spectacular. After one dinner Howard arranged, one of the doctors in attendance began handing out 2 c percent more prescriptions for Celebrex, going from about 100 prescriptions a month on average to i 25. At a dollar a pill, 2 c more prescriptions a month translated into thousands of dollars in increased annual revenue for Pfizer—after a single event that cost the company fifteen hundred dollars for the speaker's fee and another two thousand for the dinner.

Health and Nutrition Secrets Russell L. Blaylock, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

In private practice, we joked that a drug rep couldn't see us unless he brought some toys. The 1960s and 1970s saw an attack on such practices, and soon the federal government stepped in and outlawed much of this activity. A significant number of doctors refused to see drug reps, leaving pharmaceutical companies with few avenues to the prime source of their sales. After all, only doctors could prescribe medications. At first, pharmaceutical companies stepped up advertising, some of which ran for four pages, in the medical journals and weekly magazines sent to doctors' offices.

The sunscreen myth: How sunscreen products actually promote cancer Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Just look at how many doctors wrote prescriptions for Vioxx, for example, after being visited by a Vioxx drug rep pushing it as a "miracle drug" for joint pain. Also keep in mind that doctor-prescribed medications are the fourth leading cause of death in America today. About 100,000 Americans die each year from following the advice of their doctor. Does it really make any sense to get your health advice from a group of professionals who kill more Americans each year than all the terrorists have ever killed in the history of this country?

The Big Fix: How the Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American Consumers Katharine Greider See book keywords and concepts

When addressing physician audiences on the subject of industry promotions, UCLA's Hoffman can count on getting a laugh from this one-liner: "Who here has seen an ugly drug rep?" Like all good jokes, it's funny because it reveals a basic truth: The relationship between drug reps and physicians is subject to all the usual rules of human interaction, including the human tendency to be charmed by someone who's attractive, personable, smart, and who aims to please. While drug reps talk for a few minutes about new drugs, they also try to spread a little "goodwill," as Hoffman puts it.

Bush / Big Pharma conspiracy? White House to oppose open disclosure of clinical drug trials Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Doctors, for one, need to have access to this information so they can make informed decisions on the safety of pharmaceuticals rather than just relying on some sexy young drug rep who buys them lunch and showers them with gifts. It takes a real crook to argue that doctors, scientists and the general public should all be kept ignorant of the results of clinical trials on pharmaceuticals. The idea that only a corrupt, industry-influenced FDA should be the funnel for all "truth" about pharmaceuticals is blatantly deceptive. The FDA doesn't determine the truth, nor report it... it spins the truth!

America Fooled: The Truth About Antidepressants, Antipsychotics and How We've Been Deceived Dr. Timothy Scott See book keywords and concepts

Of course, drug reps do not see themselves as "drug pushers." They believe their job is in large measure to educate doctors—98% saying so in one survey.41 Most of this same sample did not believe that their main job was marketing, and 96% of them believed the information they provided the physicians was accurate.42 As you learn how drug studies are designed (mind drug studies being the most problematic of all), you will learn that these drug reps are wrong. The information they provide is often inaccurate. Furthermore, they are primarily marketers.

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There's a saying that you'll never meet an ugly drug rep," said Dr. Thomas Carli, of the University of Michigan.62 "Many give off a kind of glow, as if they had just emerged from a spa or salon. And they are always, hands down, the best-dressed people in the hospital," writes Carl Elliott, longtime observer of the drug industry.63 A common practice is to recruit future drug salespeople from the cheerleading ranks of major colleges. "Pharma Babes," they're called by doctors behind closed doors. T.

The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It Marcia Angell, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

A typical doctor is visited by several every week (if you remember the ratio of one drug rep to every five or six practicing doctors, that is not as surprising as it seems), and doctors in high-prescribing specialties may be visited by a dozen in one day. The reps make friends not only with the doctors but with their entire staffs, and often announce their arrival by distributing goodies to everyone. Sometimes they provide lunch. Doctors, for their part, look to drug reps for information about the latest drugs, as well as the inevitable sack full of free samples.

Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda Jacky Law See book keywords and concepts

Dr Neal Moser, a pulmonary and critical care physician with a 13-doctor group practice in Edgewood, Kentucky, for example, has made it known he sees nothing wrong in accepting $50 for listening to a short sales pitch from a drug rep in his office. This is the deal offered by Time-Concepts LLC, one of several companies that have moved in to ease the strain on that two-minute window. The company receives $105 from a drug company each time it gets a rep in the office: $50 goes to the doctor, $50 it keeps, and $5 goes to a charity the doctor gets to select.

The Big Fix: How the Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American Consumers Katharine Greider See book keywords and concepts

The industry's so-called educational program enjoys the kind of student-teacher ratio public-school teachers dream about: a drug rep for roughly every eight doctors in America. Many physicians too busy seeing patients to study the medical literature rely on these "detailers" as their first and most accessible source of information on new drugs. And while the nature of their product and extent of their access might seem to distinguish drug reps from other salespeople, that is quite simply an illusion. "Commission: 13K at quota, uncapped!" trumpets the aforementioned job posting for a St.

Big Tobacco and Big Pharma: same tactics, different chemicals Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Maybe you are a drug rep because you just needed a job. But I think it's important to note that there's a great tendency for human beings, when they need jobs, to set aside their ethics. They tend to dissociate themselves from the long term effects of what they are doing. Historically, we saw this of course in Nazi Germany, where people were members of the Nazi party. They were part of a machine that was creating tremendous evil, pain and suffering, and destruction in many different ways. (I'm not talking just about the Holocaust here.

The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It Marcia Angell, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

Only later did she learn he was a drug rep from a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary. She sued the company, which settled out of court. But her experience is not unusual. Drug companies pay doctors several hundred dollars a day to allow sales reps to shadow them as they see patients, a practice called a "precep-torship." One Schering-Plough rep explained that "it's another way to build a relationship with the doctor and hopefully build business." That was very candid of her. But patients should not be used for that purpose.

Stop the Medicine! A Medical Doctor's Miraculous Recovery with Natural Healing Cynthia A. Foster, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

There was one particular drug rep, a very well-dressed lady who sauntered into the office one day oozing with sex appeal, saying in a somewhat childish sexy voice, "You are prescribing_for your padents, aren't you?" She might as well have flipped her fancy pleated short skirt up or taken off her perfecdy pressed blouse. Maybe that's what made her a good drug rep. The male doctor replied that of course he was. The way she pranced about with that perfect perky smile reminded me of a Barbie doll.

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I question my physicians based on the minimal knowledge I have as a drug rep and—well, it's not that the physicians are stupid. It's the amount of information they have to know. It's just phenomenal." My former intern, Sabrina Rubin, who had done much of the research for my first drug articles and was now a full-time writer, had gotten interested in drug reps and did a piece about them. One of the characters in it who was a local rep for a top company had been arrogant enough to talk to her frankly and even pose for pictures without getting permission from his employers.

Death by Medicine Gary Null PhD, Carolyn Dean MD ND, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD, Dorothy Smith PhD. See book keywords and concepts

The investigative show NBC's "Dateline" wondered if your doctor is moonlighting as a drug rep. After a year-long investigation they reported that because doctors can legally prescribe any drug to any patient for any condition, drug companies heavily promote "off-label" and frequently inappropriate and non-tested uses of these medications in spite of the fact that these drugs are only approved for specific indications they have been tested for.

The Big Fix: How the Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American Consumers Katharine Greider See book keywords and concepts

I thank the people who spoke to me about their own lives: families struggling with chronic illness and unmanageable drug bills, an Iowa nurse, the rural drug rep, the local pharmacist, to name a few. Their concrete experiences focused my thinking and sharpened my sense of purpose. I am also grateful to Art Hilgart, whose many years in the drug industry led him to a critique of its current practices that is insistent but hardly bitter; I learned a great deal during the hours we spent talking about, among other topics, the fascinating history of the business.

Stop the Medicine! A Medical Doctor's Miraculous Recovery with Natural Healing Cynthia A. Foster, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

Maybe that's what made her a good drug rep. The male doctor replied that of course he was. The way she pranced about with that perfect perky smile reminded me of a Barbie doll. She left more free samples after educadng him for about 5-10 minutes on the drug - its dose, side effects, indications, etc. I think her spiel was the only information he ever got about the new drugs that came out. Good thing she came by. The funny thing was that she was not a medical doctor; what made her the authority on treating patients? How did she know if her drug would help his patients?

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ABOUT THE CREATOR OF NATURALPEDIA: Mike Adams, the creator of this NaturalNews Naturalpedia, is the editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's top natural health news site, creator of the Honest Food Guide (www.HonestFoodGuide.org), a free downloadable consumer food guide based on natural health principles, author of Grocery Warning, The 7 Laws of Nutrition, Natural Health Solutions, and many other books available at www.TruthPublishing.com, creator of the earth-friendly EcoLEDs company (www.EcoLEDs.com) that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting products, founder of Arial Software (www.ArialSoftware.com), a permission e-mail technology company, creator of the CounterThink Cartoon series (www.NaturalNews.com/index-cartoons.html) and author of over 1,500 articles, interviews, special reports and reference guides available at www.NaturalNews.com. Adams' personal philosophy and health statistics are available at www.HealthRanger.org.