Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |  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. drug reps are trained to note any detail that can be used to establish a personal relationship with a doctor. Ahari stated, "During training, I was told, when you're out to dinner with a doctor, 'The physician is eating with a friend. You are eating with a client.'"
Drug reps offer gifts, and not just mugs and pens inscribed with drug names. | | A paper published April 24, 2007 in the Public Library of Science journal Medicine uncovers the tactics which pharmaceutical sales representatives, commonly called "drug reps," are trained to use in promoting drugs to prescribing physicians.
"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... | | The pharmaceutical industry employs 100,000 drug reps whose job is, first and foremost, to sell drugs. Their tactics are on par with some of the most clever and potent brainwashing techniques used throughout the world, including those used on political prisoners to convince them to denounce their home nations. Doctors are, in effect, being successfully targeted and influenced through advanced brainwashing campaigns designed to alter prescribing behavior and sell more high-profit drugs. Far from being immune to such techniques, it appears that physicians are remarkably susceptible to them. | | The highest prescribing doctors are the ones with whom the drug reps work hardest to build relationships. According to Ahari, "The highest prescribers (9s and 10s) are every rep's sugar mommies and daddies." Lower prescribing doctors are hardly ignored, however; Ahari explained that he was taught to "pick a handful out and make them feel special enough" and then associate increased prescribing with personal attention and a reward such as dinner at a fine restaurant.
When doctors express skepticism about a certain drug, reps will take one of several approaches. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts |  These drug reps are there to talk about how the meds work, and they're armed with all kinds of literature—periodicals and copies of research studies—that "prove" the meds work.
Of course, these drug reps aren't talking about studies that show the relationship between excess sugar consumption and heart disease, despite the fact that so much information is out there. As you'll soon learn in SUGAR SHOCK!, we seek to fill in these many, many educational gaps.
In the last 25 years, many cardiologists have come to believe that high ("bad") LDL cholesterol (greater than 160) causes heart disease. |
Craig Pepin-Donat
See book keywords and concepts |  The only thing more incredible than the fact that drug reps bribe physicians is that some physicians accept these questionable inducements.
Speaking from Experience
I have been prescribed so many drugs in my life I could open my own pharmacy. For years, I would blindly take what the doctor prescribed. Because I had degenerative disk disease on two levels of my spine for more than 12 years, as well as a variety of sports related injuries, I have used most of the commonly prescribed pain medications. There are very few pain medications that I have not tried. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |  Big Pharma executives, drug reps and the irresponsible psychiatrists who dish these pills out to teenagers might as well have just walked right into the mall and set off a bomb themselves. These are the people ultimately responsible for the tragedy in Omaha. Hawkins may have pulled the trigger, but modern psychiatry drugged him with violence-inducing chemicals. The fact that such drugs promote violence isn't even disputed. It's printed right on the warning labels of those drugs! |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts | | Of course, these drug reps aren't talking about studies that show the relationship between excess sugar consumption and heart disease, despite the fact that so much information is out there. As you'll soon learn in SUGAR SHOCK!, we seek to fill in these many, many educational gaps.
In the last 25 years, many cardiologists have come to believe that high ("bad") LDL cholesterol (greater than 160) causes heart disease. I, however, see cholesterol as only a small part of the disease process. It's a minor player, but it's been built up to be the major player. |
Too Profitable to CureBrent Hoadley, Ph.D.
See book keywords and concepts | | In 2003, the BMJ cover shows pigs in white coats lunching and golfing with weasel drug reps. The power of drug companies to buy influence in every key health care area has clearly shocked the UK parliamentary committee.19
Medical schools deserve to be blamed for much of this influence peddling, for the degradation of research standards, and for the development of doctors who, when entering practice, become mouthpieces for the only education that is constant—the pharmaceutical rep. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |  Who are these drug reps? I've met a lot of these drug reps. They're everyday, nice people; people you might have as friends. 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. |
Charles Barber
See book keywords and concepts |  When I was working in homeless shelters, I was shocked that these bubbly and perky drug reps (all women) would brave our gothic, cavernous, and squalid facilities for even two minutes with the psychiatrist who prescribed the drugs. My clients—most of whom hadn't been in such proximity to an attractive woman for decades—would eye them with a combination of caution, fear, and lust.
If the drug companies spent more money on research instead of marketing, they would avoid their largest current dilemma—their increasing inability to produce good new products. |
Craig Pepin-Donat
See book keywords and concepts | | One of the many ways drug reps achieve their sales targets is with samples passed from the drug company to the sales reps to the physicians and on to their patients to see what works. Physicians quite often use these samples to treat symptoms that the drug was never intended for. This is known as "off-label use" and is a common practice amongst physicians and widely promoted by drug companies and their sales force. This is an unnecessary risk none of us should take. You should not unknowingly be a part of some corporation's clinical trial. | | Physicians for Sale
Until recently, in addition to providing free samples, it was common practice for drug reps to actually bribe physicians by taking them out to dinner, paying for office equipment, or travel and entertainment for special conferences in return for the physicians prescribing their drugs. Not until July 2002 did negative exposure about this unethical practice force the drug industry to "voluntarily" create new ethical guidelines, which explicitly outline the proper interaction between a salesperson and a physician. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
See book keywords and concepts |  At least eight studies in peer-reviewed journals have documented that the marketing of drugs to physicians via drug reps, honorariums, enticements, seminars, and samples has a profound influence on both their prescribing behavior and their tendency to buy "hook, line, and sinker" what the drug companies tell them about their products. One study—published January 19, 2000, in no less than the ultra-conservative Journal of the American Medical Association— concluded that "the present extent of physician-industry interactions appears to affect prescribing and professional behavior." Ya think? | | 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. | | The Public Library of Science journal Medicine in 2007 published a damning paper called "Following the Script: How drug reps Make Friends and Influence Doctors." In it, coauthor Shahram Ahari—a former pharmaceutical sales rep for Eli Lilly—wrote: "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. |
Shannon Brownlee
See book keywords and concepts |  The medical community has debated for years whether or not drug reps and the gifts they bear have any effect on the prescribing habits of doctors. A majority of doctors believe that the gifts and favors they receive have little or no effect on their prescribing habits, and they find it deeply insulting for anyone to suggest that they do. If you were to ask your own doctor if she prescribed a particular drug for you because she likes the free sticky notepads the rep brings each week, she would likely swear on the Hippocratic oath that she based her decision on sound medical science. | | The more time doctors spend with drug reps, and the more free gifts, drug samples, and food they accept, the more likely they are to prescribe the brand-name drugs that the reps are pushing. Physicians who have the most contact with reps prescribe the most "irrationally," which means they give patients expensive, brand-name drugs when there are cheaper and often better, safer alternatives—or when no drug at all would have been the best choice. | | As the student makes his way through medical school and then his internship and residency, he gratefully eats the food that drug reps provide at grand rounds. He sees the trinkets that reps bring to his instructors, he knows about the trips senior doctors take, and he watches them head off to fancy dinners, all courtesy of the industry. By the time doctors go into practice, many of them view presents and favors from reps as an entitlement, a little payback for the sleepless nights and low wages they put up with during their training. | | For their part, many drug reps believe they are doing God's work selling pharmaceuticals. While he was stocking a doctor's supply closet, one young rep told me he was inspired to quit his job selling copiers and join a drug company because "if you sell copiers, you're just selling a machine. It's not the same as saving lives."
At a deeper level, however, reps are trading on the psychology of reciprocity, the ingrained sense, shared by most human beings, that those who receive favors should repay them. | | The last thing they want is for the thought leader to figure out that her opinion is being bought, or for her colleagues to think she's a shill. drug reps are often the ones who make the first contact with a new recruit, flattering her by saying how widely respected she is by her peers and how much the drug company values the opinions and counsel of doctors like her. Ever so slowly, the thought leader's company contacts introduce the idea that she should help them get the word out about their company's drug. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |  Let's face it: Doctors have just gotten used to the idea that they're supposed to be treated to a higher level of comfort and prestige than the rest of the population, and if it takes drug money to buy that lifestyle, then bring on the drug reps!
Actually, I'm being facetious. Most doctors hate those pesky drug reps. And the smart ones can't stand Big Pharma, either. The really good doctors will first see if they can get patients to make healthy lifestyle changes on their own, and if they can't, they'll prescribe generic drugs instead of the overpriced brand-name drugs. |
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. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |  Merck seems to be everywhere, with drug reps, consultants, marketing people, email marketing people, scientists, lobbyists and so on. It seems impossible to go anywhere in society without running into somebody who works for Merck.
At the same time, I've never met a person who worked for Merck who wasn't a really interesting and capable person. Every person I've met has been intelligent and appeared to be honest. | | In a very real sense, the drug reps, drug scientists, drug marketing experts and others involved in the massive pharmaceutical racket playing out in America today are also just "following orders" to keep their jobs. They're not looking at the big picture... the truth that they are merely a cog in a gigantic profit machine designed to expand disease and exploit human suffering in order to generate obscene corporate profits. Both the Nazi party and Big Pharma have killed millions of innocent people. The Nazis did it for political power, Big Pharma does it for financial power. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |  What would all those people who work for the hospitals do and what would the drug companies and all those drug reps and doctors do? Gee, what would people do for jobs if so many people weren't so sick?
Big Business makes big bucks off a nation of diseased people
Health care and all the discussion about health care reform is really a discussion about managing a nation of diseased people. It's not about ending disease. It's not about curing cancer. It's not about preventing heart disease. It's about managing these illnesses. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts | | I've met a lot of these drug reps. They're everyday, nice people; people you might have as friends. 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. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |  The workers in the industry aren't adding any real quality of life to anybody: imagine literally millions of doctors, pharmacists, pharmaceutical drug reps, and Big Pharma administrative staff sweating away at their jobs all day long, yet doing absolutely nothing to enhance the quality of life of the general public.
The GDP (Gross Domestic Product), of course, records all of this activity as "progress!" Yep, it's economic activity. Somebody is selling something to somebody else. That counts as wealth under the rules of classic free market economics. And yet nobody really benefits. |
Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels
See book keywords and concepts |  The doctors, the drug reps, the medical education, the ads, the patient groups, the guidelines, the celebrities, the conferences, the public awareness campaigns, the thought-leaders, and even the regulator's advisers—at every level there is money from drug companies lubricating what many believe is an unhealthy flow of influence. Industry does not crudely buy influence with individuals and organizations—rather its largesse is handed out to those considered to be most commercially helpful. The industry's sponsorship is strategic, systematic, and systemic. |
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FAIR USE NOTICE: The research quoted here is provided under the protection of Fair Use provisions and published by the 501(c)3 non-profit Consumer Wellness Center for the purposes of public comment and education. Authors / publishers may submit books for consideration of inclusion here.
TERMS OF USE: Read full terms of use. Citations of text from NaturalPedia must include: 1) Full credit to the original author and book title. 2) Secondary credit to the Natural News Naturalpedia as a research resource and a link to www.NaturalNews.com/np/index.html
This unique compilation of research is copyright (c) 2008 by the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center.
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.
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