For the Influence, Martha Rosenberg looks into all of the ways Big Pharma attempts to market its drugs to physicians. “They used to wine us and dine us. An SSRI maker flew my entire office to a Caribbean island…but now nothing,” a psychiatrist tells Rosenberg.
It is true, companies who manufacture products do like to wine and dine their salesforce, Subzero / Wolf did a great job of that in my industry. However, I was a kitchen / bath designer, not a doctor, and how well the appliances created and preserved food was relevant to the sales pitch.
Food isn’t relevant to pharmaceutical sales. And doctors aren’t supposed to be merely glorified drug salesmen, they are supposed to be in the healing business. So sad the medical industry forgot this basic reality.
Sex workers, free cash, free trips, free meals…for drugs that heal nothing, at best create awful side effects, and at worst maim and kill. “But then how do we get lunch?!” You can’t MAKE this stuff up.
Liz Sydney
I don’t know about the rest of you, but there were tears in my eyes as I read about how those heartless legislators prevented those poor psychiatrists from going on a lavish trip to the Caribbean. Such a tragedy! 🙂
With seven digit incomes you’d think psych doctors could pay for their own lunches.
