Selling your soul

Nov/25/2007 08:53 Filed in: HCP Marketing
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"I was willing to dance around the truth in order to make the drug reps happy. Receiving $750 checks for chatting with some doctors during a lunch break was such easy money that it left me giddy. Like an addiction it was very hard to give up." So is the quote from Dr Daniel Carlat who in 2001 jumped over to the dark side and started to take money from Wyeth to talk to other physicians about Effexor. The article in Sunday's New York Times magazine highlights just how easy it is for physicians to become attached to the "supplemental income" for speaking and promoting drugs.



The article, that reads like a diary, is very interesting because it sheds light on the process that both drug companies and physicians take for promoting drugs to other health care physicians. Dr Carlat eventually made over $30,000 a year in these "speaking" arrangements, a considerable sum when added to his $140,000 annual income. But there are more troubling aspects about the revelations in this article such as : are physicians willing to sell their souls for money? Would they be willing to promoted medications to other HCP's in order to ensure the steady stream of dollars or do they really believe that the medications is demonstrating efficacy in their patients?


Let's step back a second here and look at the landscape of consumer marketing and brand advocates. I write this BLOG on an iMac computer. I like Apple and Mac computers so much that I often try and convince my friends and coworkers to get a Mac. I do it because I really believe that the Mac is a better PC than any Windows PC and know that if people use a Mac they are often going to be extremely satisfied. I am not compensated by Apple nor do I receive any discounts from them but nonetheless I continue to shout about their products. The value of a brand influencer is enormous in todays consumer empowered world. Just go to Amazon.com and read consumer reviews about products or music. It can quickly make or break a new product but pharma has no idea how to address this issue.


Now if I was to receive a check from Apple for shouting about their products do you think my enthusiasm would be as well received? The answer to that is no.

So for physicians trying to run a profitable practice and make ends meet it's easy to become enthusiastic about a pharmaceutical product when they can make $10, $20, or $30,000 a year or more to talking to others about the little pills or capsules. What's the harm? Well if you need an answer to that then you had better look in the mirror. The harm is that too many people in this industry have shifted loyalties from patients to the almighty dollar.


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I am also talking about DTC marketers as well. Too many of them are not willing to take risks to inform and educate patients in a transparent way. They hide information that should be easy to get in label information that people don't understand. They only release data that supports their products claims and change endpoints on clinical trials hoping that physicians won't notice.


Now I am sure that there are a lot of physicians who would accept money from any pharma company to promote products they did not endorse or believe in but believe it or not doctors are people too and the temptation to cross over the line maybe too great in an era of increased costs.

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