Pharmaceutical Advertising

A little skepticism is a healthy thing:

Many patients taking prescription drugs believe that pharmaceutical companies have too much influence over their physicians’ prescribing practices, according to a new survey.

* * * *

About half of the medication users believed that their doctors were too eager to write a prescription when other non-pharmacological options

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t trust pharmaceutical sales reps.  Few of them are medical doctors, but they tell doctors which drugs should be prescribed for which patients.  Traditionally, their compensation is based in part upon how many drugs the doctors they visit prescribe.  This leads to a gigantic incentive to engage in off-label

I sure hope so.  Because the ability of pharmaceuticals to find out how often doctors prescribe which medications allows those pharmaceuticals to engage in all sorts of shenanigans, like finding doctors open to ghostwriting and pushing for off-label prescription use.

Washington Bureau – When your doctors writes you a prescription, that’s just between you, your