Kelley Walker wrote:
> i forget which study it was that my mother referred me to, but it was about
> how physicians got their information about drugs. numbah#1 source:
> advertising in the trades, in the forms of various promotional materials
> distrubted to their offices, visits, etc. but more than that, part of the
> advertising pitch is thins like a nice dinner. when i was in the catering
> biz, our biggest clients/biggest spenders were the drug companies. every
> month the sales rep from merck, sharpe and dohm (sp?) and other companies
> used to put on wonderful small dinner parties with the best of everything
> -- just for those overworked professionals.
I eat well at the luncheons the drug representatives put on, and tell the doctors jocularly that I'm protecting their moral status because I am not legally authorized to prescribe.
At the same time, there is a fair amount of cynicism among the physicians. They call the eats "drug pusher food," and make jokes about how Vioxx and Celebrex are pretty much the same, but one comes with Chines and the other with Italian food. I would like to think they apply objective criteria to prescribing, and a lot of them probably do. I also hear them asking what sound like pretty searching questions of the representatives, who do have to provide answers.
I should mention that I myself refuse to eat what the home care vendors provide.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema