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Physicians in pocket of pharmaceutical industry

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Also by Max Schlusselberg:

Physicians in pocket of pharmaceutical industry (November 9, 2007)
Landlord greed crosses boundary (October 12, 2007)
Milwaukee gang rape exemplifies state's prison woes (September 14, 2007)
Second Amendment out-of-date (April 20, 2007)
Internet lacks standard of decency (March 20, 2007)

by Max Schlusselberg

Friday, November 9, 2007

The German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG announced this week that it would withdraw its controversial heart surgery drug, Trasylol, from the market, after studies found that the use of this drug increased heart surgery death rates by 50 percent. Thus, Trasylol has been added to a mounting pile of banished products, including the once-popular pain reliever Vioxx.

The prescription drug industry in America is one of unimaginable fortune and wealth. More than $200 billion is spent on prescription drugs in the United States annually, making the pharmaceutical industry almost as ludicrously profitable as the oil industry. The key to big pharmaceutical success does not lie in some type of health epidemic in America. Instead, the secret to big pharmaceutical profit lays in the dubious marketing of prescription drugs. There exists in this country an alarming relationship between doctors and pharmaceutical companies that permeates all aspects of the physician's practice. Perhaps the most obvious indicator of an unhealthy association is that there are slews of incentives that drug companies offer to doctors in exchange for supporting company products.

These enticements range from the seemingly benign, such as giving a physician stationery that is marked with the names of prescription drugs, to the sponsoring of physicians' luncheons, to the much more worrisome gifts, such as the payment of large consulting fees to doctors who prescribe company goods.

The obvious marketing of drugs to doctors is nothing short of conflicting and unconscionable. Whether or not a patient is to receive a prescription medication should be based solely on medical needs, not on the fact that your physician just took his or her lunch break on the drug industry's dollar.

In 2003, according to Dr. Murray Kopelow, president of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, drug companies provided approximately 90 percent of the $1 billion spent per year on continuing medical education in America. This means that doctors are being educated by those who stand to gain the most profit from the business of diagnosing an increasing number of Americans with an array of superfluous disorders and controversial diseases.

In recent decades, pharmaceutical companies have found that marketing their drugs directly to the consumer is a profitable tactic. Possibly one of the biggest factors contributing to the success of what has been dubbed "direct to consumer" marketing is that there are very few regulations for prescription drug advertisements.

Drug companies are not required to seek federal approval of an ad prior to airing, nor are they required to only advertise drugs that have been found to be completely effective and safe. Although many would argue that there are very few drugs that are both completely effective as well as completely safe, consumers are liable to believe if a drug is publicly advertised, it must have met both of these qualifications.

Here is where the vicious profiteering cycle begins. Consumers from all walks of life are subject to the advertisements for several different prescription drugs. A recent physician telephone poll reported at the annual meeting of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists that 52 percent of doctors surveyed said the information in the prescription advertisements was only partially accurate.

Furthermore, 91 percent of the physicians surveyed felt pressure to prescribe these advertised drugs to their patients after the patients had seen these ads and asked for the drug. A whopping 36 percent of these doctors said they gave in to this pressure and prescribed these medications even when the drug at hand was not the most logical or safe treatment for the patient.

To be sure, consumers are being barraged with half truths concerning their health needs, and are in turn putting pressure on the doctors for the same prescriptions that the pharmaceutical industry is pressuring them to write at every opportunity. This process causes an extraordinary number of unneeded prescriptions written to a population swallowing pills faster than it can find water to wash them down with.

In order to protect society at large from the corrupt business of prescription drugs, doctors must first be completely unhinged from the pharmaceutical industry.

Furthermore, direct-to-consumer marketing tactics should have no place in the prescription drug industry. Doctors are being led astray by financial incentive instead of acting according to their Hippocratic Oath, which professes to "practice and prescribe to the best of my ability for the good of my patients," not to the benefit of the drug industry.

The massive medical industry should have much more to do with doctoring and healing than profiteering and pandering to a burgeoning pharmaceutical industry that holds in its pockets your physician's next trip to the Bahamas.

Max Schlusselberg (schlusselberg@wisc.edu) is a sophomore majoring in journalism.

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Anonymous (November 9, 2007 @ 3:57am):

Minnesota has a pretty successful program for limiting the influence, including putting limits on food donations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/us/12gift.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Anonymous (November 10, 2007 @ 12:10pm):

Uh oh, someone watched Michael Moore's "sicko" movie.

Anonymous (November 11, 2007 @ 9:29am):

This diatribe would benefit from some fair balance to the good that the industry has contributed such as research and cures that have saved and prolonged lives. The author may want to find readily available statistics on the many diseases that have been eradicated, and the hospital stays that have been averted or shortened by the contributions of this industry.

BTW, speaking of Moore: Over the past five years, Moore's holdings have "included such evil pharmaceutical and medical companies as Pfizer, Merck, Genzyme, Elan PLC, Eli Lilly, Becton Dickinson and Boston Scientific."

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