Makes me wonder if Dr. Stossel came on before or after the Biederman and Co. news. If the Psychiatry department can pull over $1 million for PhRMA friendly faculty, it makes one wonder about Dr. Stossel’s “funding.”

My experience - PhRMA advocates in the prescriber community do not come for free. Whoever the PR firm that prepped Stossel for television didn’t do a great job though. Sure he had more air time, but the “Mutt and Jeff” juxtaposition reminded me of Nixon and Kennedy.

Dan Carlat is correct about the conventions continuing to come to Boston. That talking point was more, rather transparent, fear-mongering. Funny though that no-one mentioned the recent study that showed patients who received “free” samples incurred subsequent higher health costs. If those higher health costs were reliably connected to better outcomes, no one would object to whatever marketing tactics could be used.

Sadly in pharmaceuticals, newer usually not better, but it always has a higher net present value for the industry.

Drug samples are great if the physician remembers to give them out.
I know from experience in a hospital that when a physician left the
area, the pharmacist would clean out his/her office of the samples
left in the office. Most of the time 80% of the samples had expired.

In most cases the drug rep “parrots” what the company wants the
physician to know and in many cases does not or is hesitant in
suppling negative information about the drug.