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April 22, 2002 - Flashback: I remember the moist slivers of Peking Duck. The juicy lemon chicken was divine. The doctors — all one hundred or so — were extremely pleased with the dinner at the Chinese Palace Restaurant in Toronto. There was no end to the joy of feasting that evening as waiters placed one steaming platter after another on the twenty round tables in the banquet hall. Some of the guests even joked with devilish delight that they might not be able to handle dessert.
At a corner table — the table of honor — the drug company representative watched his six companions behave as if they hadn’t eaten a meal in a week. He looked very happy. The evening was working out well. As head of his company’s special division, it was his job to sponsor meetings to help educate doctors about new drug products. And he certainly ran a class act. There were only small reminders — company pens and notebooks placed at the table settings — that the company was springing for the bill — likely of several thousand dollars — for the open bar and Chinese feast, complete with wine.
And the lecture, of course, which essentially was a piece of deft propaganda for the company’s new contraceptive product.
That event occurred in 1985. But not much has changed.
Over the years, doctors have continued to receive "special education" classes supported by the drug industry. Doctors have continued to be wined and dined and invited to exotic climes, to partake of "seminars" and "brain-storming sessions (about the company’s products, of course.) In fact, in some quarters, not to be invited is a sign of a career decline. Mind you, there are some doctors that tell the companies to take a hike, but they are in the minority. Status and power in the medical community is often measured in terms of where you give your talks and how many you give — courtesy, in most cases, of the sponsoring drug companies.
So forgive me if I hoot a little when I come across a so-called new "voluntary" code the drug industry has devised that will supposedly govern how its representatives market drugs to physicians.
What? The code, which will take effect on July 1, will prohibit or cut back on entertainment for doctors? And no more gym bags, golf balls, VCRs, and freebies to the theater?
Really. What are the drug companies going to do with the $13 billion dollars they spent last year giving doctors all those perks in exchange for a chummy hearing on their products?
What one must keep in mind is the term "voluntary." For the drug industry, if history is any guide, "voluntary" is equivalent to "See, Hear and Speak No Evil." This is a code worth about as much as one-quarter-ply toilet paper.
Watch for fancy shifts in promotion. Rather than freebies to a basketball or baseball game, where the rep would manage to get in a few words about a drug product, the promotions will shift more to locales where doctors might better internalize the promos.
Like exotic boat trips where the doctors can huddle over complex statistics, hot-spot vacationland conference centers where "objective" seminars can be conducted — and I’m even betting that there will be more educational events at gourmet Chinese restaurants.
Do you really think that the $13 billion will be used to cut back on prices of medication?
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