Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20039

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

King K
Doctors and drug companies
MJA 1982 July 24; 63

Abstract:

We all like something for virtually nothing. So when a drug company asks a doctor to exchange a few minutes or even an hour of his valuable time to listen to a dissertation on the virtues of its latest offering in return for some samples, a ball-point pen or a free meal of variable quality, the arrangement would appear to be to everyone’s satisfaction.

It seems strange that so obvious a ploy should result in increased prescribing of the advocated drug, but it must do, as drug companies would hardly persist in this approach were it unproductive.

In the United States, substantial support of medical meetings and grandiose direct promotions by pharmaceutical companies have become a way of life. Until now, Australia has been spared such excess.

However, the first week of June saw a drug company promotion on an unprecedented scale simultaneously in six major Australian cities.

Under the guise of a “probing, informative and provocative programme of medicine, science and new technology”, an Australian subsidiary of a large American drug company used carefully edited interviews with medical researchers to publicise its latest anti-inflammatory agent.

At least 1500 people attended the Sydney meeting. This took place in a first class hotel whose auditorium and refreshment (including unrestricted spirits) facilities were stretched to the limit.

Spouses and friends were encouraged to attend, and many of these seemed suitably impressed. A few dissenting medical voices were overheard, raised on the crowded way to the food and drink but these were lost in prandial discussions.

How many doctors will consider next time they reach for their pads and write out a prescription for the company’s expensive wonder drug that they may have been subliminally influenced by the sheer magnitude of that evening’s production?

Research is important and costly. It is understandable that a pharmaceutical company would try to recoup the expenses of a research and development programme and, indeed, desirable for its profitability that it do so, otherwise further such programmes may be curtailed or abandoned. However, promotions of the size of June’s extravaganza, costing thousands of dollars, are not the answer, nor should they be permitted to become so. A drug should stand or fall on its own merits, not on the amount of its advertising budget.

This may sound idealistic, but it terms of patient benefit it is based on reality. Seduction by pharmaceutical companies’ rodomontades should be resisted now before such methods become established here.