Enjoyed your comments and your ethics. Since leaving big pharma i have been studying unscientific (and often outright falsehoods) marketing messages in cme programming. I have focused my energy on lipitor and pfizer funded cme and have been very disturbed by my findings at dinner meetings and online “educational programs”.

I believe the Alliance trial misanalysis is a related event in so far as its blatant disregard for science and patient centered interests. Dr. Vogel the author is one of the most extreme speakers in conveying biased off label messages in his cme speaches. Any interest in discussing?

By now, everyone knows that the distribution lists for positive and less than positive data on a branded statin were quite different.

Seems to me that the guys who aren’t “very good physicians” are at least as much in need of outcomes data as the SEC.

I keep hearing how docs will bend over backward to reward big pharma for the $5 sandwich they grabbed while saying hello over a 3 minute lunch. I am in the health care industry and I witnessed something very interesting over the holidays. A specialist (oncology) gave $500 wine baskets to his approx. 50 referring physicians. Now, everyone with any medical background would widely attest that he was not a good physician medically. He was very engaging and pleasant. So even if you got poor care, you didn’t know better and he seemed concerned. So you were willing to look past and forgive. No one should ever refer a patient to him and he had a thriving practice, I saw many sad stories come out of his office. So there is influence in all areas of life. Everyone wants to do well and make money - even bad physicians.

If you think that the occasional lunch has more influence than $500 of wine from a specialist than I don’t understand it. This is little publicized — PC physicians are not running out to report it. They feel entitled because they know they make less than specialists and feel entitled to some of what the oncologist’s make. Specialists are not the target of the press, they are not the bad guy everyone wants.

So instead of considering who brought your physician lunch when you get a script, think long and hard about the specialist they refer you to and why.

There are some great people working for Big Pharma, but not all of them are concerned with the patient, unless it directly relates to business P & L.

I’ve worked with plenty of people in the industry that have probably forgotten that it the whole point is to sell EFFECTIVE products to patients who need them, rather than just selling widgets like any other manufacturer.

DTC ads are a problem, in my view, because the average US citizen isn’t as smart as everyone makes ourselves out to be.

Sure, there are plenty of us who are intelligent, but do you really think the average person should be deciding which medication to use based on Advertising??

Granted, back to the original article, it’s not as if Big Pharma is the only industry using this type of Shout/Whisper tactic; have you ever noticed how small the corrections section of published materials is? It’s not because they are concerned with getting the correct information to their readers……

However, this is my personal health (and everyone else’s) that we are discussing here, and Big Pharma should certainly be held to a higher standard than any other industry.

I totally agree with you that they should have issued a press release.