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Quotes about Drug Reps from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"At least eight studies in peer-reviewed journals have documented that the marketing of drugs to physicians via drug reps, honorariums, enticements, seminars, and samples has a profound influence on both their prescribing behavior and their tendency to buy "hook, line, and sinker" what the drug companies tell them about their products. One study—published January 19, 2000, in no less than the ultra-conservative Journal of the American Medical Association— concluded that "the present extent of physician-industry interactions appears to affect prescribing and professional behavior." Ya think?" - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why (Get the book.)

"These drug reps are there to talk about how the meds work, and they're armed with all kinds of literature—periodicals and copies of research studies—that "prove" the meds work. Of course, these drug reps aren't talking about studies that show the relationship between excess sugar consumption and heart disease, despite the fact that so much information is out there. As you'll soon learn in SUGAR SHOCK!, we seek to fill in these many, many educational gaps. In the last 25 years, many cardiologists have come to believe that high ("bad") LDL cholesterol (greater than 160) causes heart disease." - Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., Sugar Shock!: How Sweets and Simple Carbs Can Derail Your Life-- and How YouCan Get Back on Track (Get the book.)

"When I was working in homeless shelters, I was shocked that these bubbly and perky drug reps (all women) would brave our gothic, cavernous, and squalid facilities for even two minutes with the psychiatrist who prescribed the drugs. My clients—most of whom hadn't been in such proximity to an attractive woman for decades—would eye them with a combination of caution, fear, and lust. If the drug companies spent more money on research instead of marketing, they would avoid their largest current dilemma—their increasing inability to produce good new products." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"The Public Library of Science journal Medicine in 2007 published a damning paper called "Following the Script: How drug reps Make Friends and Influence Doctors." In it, coauthor Shahram Ahari—a former pharmaceutical sales rep for Eli Lilly—wrote: "It's my job to figure out what a physician's price is. For some it's dinner at the finest restaurants, for others it's enough convincing data to let them prescribe confidently, and for others it's my attention and friendship ... but at the most basic level, everything is for sale and everything is an exchange." - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why (Get the book.) "The article further detailed how a sales force of 100,000 drug reps (one drug rep per 2.5 targeted physicians) provides "rationed doses of samples, gifts, services, and flattery" to those physicians who are likely to prescribe the rep's drug. "Every word, every courtesy, every gift, every piece of information provided is carefully crafted," say the authors, "not to assist doctors or patients, but to increase market share for targeted drugs." Should physicians refuse to meet with a rep, "their staff is dined and flattered in hopes that they will act as emissaries for a rep's message." - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why (Get the book.)

"When doctors pay more attention to the Cochrane Collaboration and to In-foPOEMs than to drug reps, and when they learn to read the literature more critically, they will undoubtedly do a better job of treating their patients. And the journal editors will raise the quality of the papers they publish by tightening the rules for who can write them. But as valuable as the efforts of the In-foPOEMs team may be, along with those of Michael Stuart and Sheri Suite's courses for doctors discussed in chapter 5, and groups like No Free Lunch, they can't fix the problem on their own." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"According to an article in the Journal of General Internal Medicine published in 1996,42 percent of the material given to doctors by drug reps made claims that were in violation of FDA regulations, and only 39 percent of the material provided scientific evidence to support its marketing claims. Most doctors firmly believe that their opinions about drugs and scientific evidence are not compromised by these interactions. The research shows otherwise." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "Moreover, you may wonder how self-respecting doctors could possibly allow themselves to be influenced by the sales pitches from people with so much less understanding of the complexities and pitfalls of medical practice, and with such obvious commercial motives. The drug reps provide what can seem to busy doctors like a useful service. Along with their trinkets, doughnuts, and free lunches, they arrive with reprints of articles from medical journals and the drug company's own educational materials summarizing the latest medical research." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "Eight out of 10 medical residents saw the inclusion of such sponsored education and interaction with drug reps as "appropriate." This shows how seamlessly drug company infomercials have become integrated into medical training, even in the very best medical centers, just as soft drink and snack machines gradually have become accepted as a normal part of the public school environment." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"As the son of a family practitioner in Clover, South Carolina, Carl Elliott grew up surrounded by trinkets from drug reps. "I think I was eight years old before I figured out that not all Frisbees come with the word 'Merck' written on them," he says. Like his father and elder brother, Elliott attended medical school. He never went into practice, however, choosing instead to go on to a Ph.D. in philosophy. Now a professor at the University of Minnesota, Elliott has recently turned his attention to the ethics of gift giving in the pharmaceutical business." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"Between 1995 and 2005, the number of drug reps in the US increased from 38,000 to 100,000" (http://medicine.plosioumals.org/perlserv/?request=qetdocument&doi=10.1371 %2Fiournal.pmed.0040150#iournal-pmed-00401504101). With that many drug reps out there, my guess is that there has to be many other pharmaceutical reps, just like both Gwen and Kathleen, who do have a conscience. If so, it might be rather difficult for them to justify promoting drugs, known to be dangerous, to doctors for their patients, (especially young children), if they were better informed." - Dr David W Tanton, Ph.D., Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, And Stimulants - Dangerous Drugs on Trial (Get the book.)

"Drug reps have been calling on doctors since the nineteenth century, but over the past two decades their numbers have increased dramatically, doubling between 1996 and 2001 to an army of ninety thousand, which makes about one rep for every nine doctors. As their numbers have increased, so has their influence on doctors' prescribing habits. Kate Howard began working as a drug rep in 2003, after returning to the small town in the Midwest where she grew up in order to help her mother care for her eighty-year-old father." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.) "Gifts are a critical selling tool for all drug reps. At medical meetings, reps hand out mountains of freebies—and doctors can be seen strolling among drug company booths carrying bags that overflow with passport holders, nifty CD carrying cases, giant beach towels, waterproof tote bags, automatic coffeemakers, elegant silver business card holders, and USB memory sticks. Some reps talk about offering doctors far more lavish gifts, including concert tickets, television sets for their waiting rooms, junkets to golf outings, wine tastings, and cigar parties." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"There are also moves to limit the largely unrestricted access by drug reps to physicians and, often, to patients. Again, students are providing much of the push. The biggest comes from the 30,000-member American Medical Student Association. In a campaign dubbed PharmFree, med students are asked to sign what the group calls the "model oath for the new physician." Its core: "I will make medical decisions . . . free from the influence of advertising or promotion. I will not accept money, gifts, or hospitality that will create a conflict of interest in my education, practice, teaching, or research." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.)

"Physicians for Sale Until recently, in addition to providing free samples, it was common practice for drug reps to actually bribe physicians by taking them out to dinner, paying for office equipment, or travel and entertainment for special conferences in return for the physicians prescribing their drugs. Not until July 2002 did negative exposure about this unethical practice force the drug industry to "voluntarily" create new ethical guidelines, which explicitly outline the proper interaction between a salesperson and a physician." - Craig Pepin-Donat, The Big Fat Health and Fitness Lie (Get the book.) "One of the many ways drug reps achieve their sales targets is with samples passed from the drug company to the sales reps to the physicians and on to their patients to see what works. Physicians quite often use these samples to treat symptoms that the drug was never intended for. This is known as "off-label use" and is a common practice amongst physicians and widely promoted by drug companies and their sales force. This is an unnecessary risk none of us should take. You should not unknowingly be a part of some corporation's clinical trial." - Craig Pepin-Donat, The Big Fat Health and Fitness Lie (Get the book.)

"Family doctors, in contrast, get things like free biros and lunches when they are visited by drug reps. And younger doctors, it seems, want the trust of their patients enough to go against these accepted practices, with various organizations calling for an end to gift giving, free lunches, sponsored education and paid speaking. 'Our quarrel is not with the pharmaceutical industry,' says the New York based No Free Lunch campaign, 'but with pharmaceutical promotion. The time has come to eliminate its influence from our practices." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.)

"The literature placed in doctors' offices by drug reps typically stresses that depression is not something which you can choose to overcome. The rationale is that depression is a medical disease, just like diabetes or arthritis, and therefore it is impossible to make a decision to "just get over it" any more than one can decide to "just get over" diabetes or arthritis. In some circles it is considered heretical to disagree with this view, but not only do I disagree, I believe those who accept this conventional view are robbed of the ability to provide the best quality of help to others." - Dr. Timothy Scott, America Fooled: The Truth About Antidepressants, Antipsychotics and How We've Been Deceived (Get the book.) "Proof" #3: PET Scans PET (positron emission photography) scan photographs which show a difference in the brains of the depressed and the non-depressed or the schizophrenic and a healthy person are found in every psychology textbook, in nearly all the brochures on antidepressants or antipsychotics left by the drug reps in doctor's offices, in psychotropic drug ads in magazines, and in the literature of all the organizations that promote a drug approach to solving mental or behavioral problems. These colorful scans seem so scientific that they are convincing." - Dr. Timothy Scott, America Fooled: The Truth About Antidepressants, Antipsychotics and How We've Been Deceived (Get the book.)

"Whereas, in the past they depended on frequent visits to the doctors' offices by drug reps to convince doctors to use their drugs, now they've bypassed doctors altogether and advertise directly on television and the radio, urging people to tell their doctors they want to try the advertised drug. Obviously, the plan has worked beautifully. The problem is that doctors, both academic and those in private practice, are exposed constantly to propaganda from the major pharmaceutical companies." - Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets (Get the book.)

"It is not just that the drug reps say these drugs can cure all kinds of mental problems. Most physicians have seen it with their own eyes. And so today these drugs are prescribed for depression, anxiety, stress related to marital problems, compulsive behaviors, eating problems, anger and sometimes even immorality. (See Box #3-5, Can Immorality Be Fixed With a Pill?) I regularly hear stories indicating that antidepressants are prescribed even when they are not sought. Over and over friends or clients share comments, such as • "I had not been sleeping as well as I used to." - Dr. Timothy Scott, America Fooled: The Truth About Antidepressants, Antipsychotics and How We've Been Deceived (Get the book.)

"Of course, these drug reps aren't talking about studies that show the relationship between excess sugar consumption and heart disease, despite the fact that so much information is out there. As you'll soon learn in SUGAR SHOCK!, we seek to fill in these many, many educational gaps. In the last 25 years, many cardiologists have come to believe that high ("bad") LDL cholesterol (greater than 160) causes heart disease. I, however, see cholesterol as only a small part of the disease process. It's a minor player, but it's been built up to be the major player." - Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., Sugar Shock!: How Sweets and Simple Carbs Can Derail Your Life-- and How YouCan Get Back on Track (Get the book.)

"In 2003, the BMJ cover shows pigs in white coats lunching and golfing with weasel drug reps. The power of drug companies to buy influence in every key health care area has clearly shocked the UK parliamentary committee.19 Medical schools deserve to be blamed for much of this influence peddling, for the degradation of research standards, and for the development of doctors who, when entering practice, become mouthpieces for the only education that is constant—the pharmaceutical rep." - Brent Hoadley, Ph.D., Too Profitable to Cure (Get the book.)

"For their part, many drug reps believe they are doing God's work selling pharmaceuticals. While he was stocking a doctor's supply closet, one young rep told me he was inspired to quit his job selling copiers and join a drug company because "if you sell copiers, you're just selling a machine. It's not the same as saving lives." At a deeper level, however, reps are trading on the psychology of reciprocity, the ingrained sense, shared by most human beings, that those who receive favors should repay them." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.) "At the front lines of this massive marketing campaign stands the drug company representative, or drug rep, usually a handsome young man or shapely young woman who has been recruited more for his or her good looks and outgoing personality than for any aptitude in science or medicine. drug reps have been calling on doctors since the nineteenth century, but over the past two decades their numbers have increased dramatically, doubling between 1996 and 2001 to an army of ninety thousand, which makes about one rep for every nine doctors." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.) "The medical community has debated for years whether or not drug reps and the gifts they bear have any effect on the prescribing habits of doctors. A majority of doctors believe that the gifts and favors they receive have little or no effect on their prescribing habits, and they find it deeply insulting for anyone to suggest that they do. If you were to ask your own doctor if she prescribed a particular drug for you because she likes the free sticky notepads the rep brings each week, she would likely swear on the Hippocratic oath that she based her decision on sound medical science." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.) "The more time doctors spend with drug reps, and the more free gifts, drug samples, and food they accept, the more likely they are to prescribe the brand-name drugs that the reps are pushing. Physicians who have the most contact with reps prescribe the most "irrationally," which means they give patients expensive, brand-name drugs when there are cheaper and often better, safer alternatives—or when no drug at all would have been the best choice." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"A significant number of doctors refused to see drug reps, leaving pharmaceutical companies with few avenues to the prime source of their sales. After all, only doctors could prescribe medications. At first, pharmaceutical companies stepped up advertising, some of which ran for four pages, in the medical journals and weekly magazines sent to doctors' offices. Soon, such ads constituted the medical journals' major source of funding, and while they continue to deny it, publishers are influenced by the pharmaceutical industry in choosing which articles to print." - Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets (Get the book.)

"Thus, they often rely on the information provided by drug reps and on what they see and hear in advertisements—little of which is balanced. They don't prescribe Nexium to get kickbacks from its manufacturer. But neither are they the only group in America that cannot be fooled! P.S. The same basic story could be told about Claritin (off patent) vs. Clarinex, Prozac (off patent) vs. Serafen, and many other drugs. DTC advertising were not clinically appropriate." In other words, physicians did not believe the patient needed an antidepressant or a test or some other requested intervention." - Dr. Timothy Scott, America Fooled: The Truth About Antidepressants, Antipsychotics and How We've Been Deceived (Get the book.)

"Even though the FDA has repeatedly cautioned doctors about using new drugs when older, better-known drugs are available, the onslaught of drug reps and intensive advertising pushing Crestor?worked. The Wall Street Journal reported that by early 2004, 27 percent of all new prescriptions for statin drugs were for Crestor? AstraZeneca sales force (Crestor? was making more calls to doctors than any of its competitors. Beginning in late February 2004, reflecting the sales calls, new prescriptions of Crestor?began to rise and overtook Lipitor?by the beginning of March." - Dr. David W. Tanton; Ph.D., A Drug-Free Approach To Healthcare, Revised Edition (Get the book.)

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