Pharmaceutical Industry Agrees to Voluntary Moratorium on Drug Company Giveaways
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Starting January 1st, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium which restricts drug company giveaways- such as Viagra pens and Lipitor coffee mugs. These “branded goodies” were meant to foster good will, but some say they may “subliminally” encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs. However, skeptics believe that the ban is a superficial measure that does nothing to curb the amount that drug companies spend each year trying to influence physicians.
One example is Joseph Biederman, a prominent Harvard child psychiatrist, who has agreed to limit activities that are financed by the drug industry. The Massachusetts General Hospital is investigating his failure to disclose the consulting fees he received from drug makers in the past. Biederman has agreed to stop participating in activities paid for by pharmaceutical companies, such as speaking engagements and clinical trials.
According to a review by Adriane Fugh-Berman and Shahram Ahari, in 2000, pharmaceutical companies spent more than 15.7 billion dollars on promoting prescription drugs in the United States. The average sales force expenditure for pharmaceutical companies is $875 million annually. Pharmaceutical reps have access to data such as how many of a physician’s patients receive specific drugs, how many prescriptions the physician writes for targeted and competing drugs, and how a physician’s prescribing habits change over time.
Physicians must reject the “false friendship” provided by pharmaceutical reps and rely on information on drugs from indifferent sources. It is important that the relationships between medical practitioners and pharmaceutical reps remain strictly professional therefore practitioners can prescribe a particular pharmaceutical drug to a patient based on his own clinical judgment without any influence from the industry.
Two helpful organizations that deal with the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and doctors are No Free Lunch, an organization committed to raising awareness about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on prescribing habits and Healthy Skepticism, an organization that aims to improve health by reducing harm from misleading drug promotions.