Doctors And Pharmaceutical Companies

[Canadian Karen]

I found this quite interesting:

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Karen

[ravenwoodglass]

I wonder why Doctors are allowed to have any 'kickbacks' from the drug companys. Kind of makes us realize why celiac is so ignored and we are just given script after script of the newest and most toxic drugs available. It should be illegal for them both to take part in these activities IMHO>

[blueeyedmanda]

That is interesting....I never take pills unless I am so sick I need antibotics. I was like this my whole life.

[luvs2eat]

Pharmaceutical drug reps are relentless in their sales practices. They're given "points" for making it in the door and more for actually getting into the doc's office to sit and talk. Companies bring fabulous lunches and breakfasts for office workers and have you ever had to sit in the waiting room for your appt. when the drug rep is shown right in??

I know doc's who have a hard time w/ all the freebies and feel the whole game is unethical, but I feel pretty certain that are few and far between.

[gfp]

Pharmaceutical drug reps are relentless in their sales practices. They're given "points" for making it in the door and more for actually getting into the doc's office to sit and talk. Companies bring fabulous lunches and breakfasts for office workers and have you ever had to sit in the waiting room for your appt. when the drug rep is shown right in??

I know doc's who have a hard time w/ all the freebies and feel the whole game is unethical, but I feel pretty certain that are few and far between.

Yep and in the end they still have to take pharmacuticals from somewhere... and the drug companies are pretty much all i the same league. For the good of their patients they still have to deal with the drug rep's and get the literature

[Nancym]

Another thing they do is pay doctors to talk to other doctors, at an expensive lunch or whatever. They're there to discourse on a medical subject, but of course they are expected to mention the company's drugs.

They get them while they're young too. I remember a flap at Stanford because Merck was threatening to pull funding because some professor was saying something bad about a drug Merck (I think it was Merck) had out at the time.

[familyfirst]

THIS BURNS ME UP! I am a teacher and I would lose my certification if I took any "kickbacks" from companies. We are one profession that should get some perks since we are teaching "our future"! Oh well, I went into the wrong profession. J/K, I love teaching.

Beth

[Ann1231]

My doctor flat out told me that most dr.s will not take hypoglycemia seriously because it is controlled by diet and there are no drugs for it so there's no money in it for them. My son went into convulsions and was in the hospital two days due to hypoglycemia. (that's how we found it). It's very frustrating to then go to a "specialist", an endocrinologist, who said hypoglycemia doesn't exist in children. Luckily the dietician we saw had a lot of previous experience with hypoglycemic children and had a great diet plan for him.

After that experience, I don't trust much of what specialists or even a lot of the general dr.s have to say. Just like celiac, one of the local dr.s said it's too much trouble to test for and then we'd have to watch our diets and it's too hard to stay on it. (needless to say we don't see him anymore!)

[mamabear]

I found it interesting that the design of this survey included paying the respondents.....therefore they already have provided a biased study. I couldn't find how many did the survey at all , or those who did it without cashing a $20 check. Also today most of the companies have a $10-12 limit per person for a lunch, so it's hardly an extravagant meal. The bulk of the gifts, extravagant meals,trips,tickets etc.. occurred before 2002(when PHarma was created) and the reporting period was after this time frame. There may be some docs who can be swayed with cold cuts and salad, but most do treat patients according to what a patient needs and not for a quick lunch. If you ever needed a free sample of a drug,the doc had to sign for the samples. Some needy patients receive hundreds of dollars worth of free meds because the doc gave the rep a few minutes of their time in order to get the samples. Besides, when is that time to occur? During a brief luch break or during clinic hours while trying to see patients?

Also the responsibility of clinical research took a mortal hit during the 1980's when the Reagan administration essentially stopped federal funding for research. This opened the door to the pharmaceutical industry to fund the research. Also they are the major financial source for the FDA....who approves the drugs! Who put all this into being??Congress!!! And those lovely paragons of virtue (Congress, I mean) are the absolute biggest hogs of a real kickback.......Republican or Democrat.....it's all the same.

No easy answers here.......choose your doctors wisely, but please don't think they can all be sold for scrap.

[ravenwoodglass]

"No easy answers here.......choose your doctors wisely, but please don't think they can all be sold for scrap."

There are never easy answers. Unfortunately we don't know we haven't got a good one until it is too late. US doctors and their refusal to look for celiac disease is costing us a lot more than money. How many years of my and my childrens life were destroyed because the doctors available in my area only wanted to hand out pills not find a reason for our health problems? My children had no childhood after celiac, just legions of ineffective pills and inaccurate diagnoses. We won't even talk about what they did to me.

There are good doctors out there, just like there are good polititians. Unfortunately you have to look under a lot of rocks to find one. And my area doesn't have many rocks.