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There are 6 comments on The Dark Side of Drug Trials

  1. why is it that gifts to doctors are considered not good?

    when two companies make the same product with the same ingredients with only different packaging and different brand names, a doctor maybe indifferent to prescribing either to the deserving/needy patient. why is it that the drug manufacturers are criticized for building a relationship with the doctors so the doctors can prescribe their products when (if the company hadn’t reached the doctor) the doctor would just be prescribing either or both with no preference.

    in distinguishing its brand from another company’s, a company would spend on its packaging and advertising, does it not make sense to spend a little less of that amount on building a stronger relationship with the doctor instead?

    1. Because,it starts doctors to make decisions on profit motive instead of being based on scientific evidence and sound clinical judgment.

      Unless you are denying that that is happening, or that it is a problem? But that would be a personal problem

    2. Well I guess it depends if your goal is to make money, or to help people (although the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.) If your goal was first and foremost to improve the health of others, it would make more sense to invest your resources into making a product that is not only DIFFERENT than those on the market, but also BETTER. If you were more interested in making money, you would invest your resources into better marketing (either by advertising or “building a stronger relationship with the doctor”) of your existing mediocre product. Prescribing decisions should be based on the merits of the drug, not the patient’s interest in getting the drug he or she saw in a commercial, and not the relationship a physician has with a pharm company.

  2. This is exactly why AHs said that the products are similar to eachother and have the same ingredients.

    I own a pharmaceutical company and my company comes under the top 5 cleanest companies I’m the region.
    Even though I make excellent products, not always is it enough since you have to give the doctors an incentive to sell your product.
    Yes, the doctor should always care about the patient first and foremost but is there any harm in competing with my direct competitors that are also in the top 5 in the region by “building stronger ties” with the doctor than the other company manages to?

    Do you think we prefer having to gift doctors? But don’t you think it’s unfair for me if I don’t gift the doctors and the doctors instead chose to prescribe drugs manufactured by companies that are not producing the quality drugs we are? Don’t you think in order for companies to stay in the market, they have to do this? If we don’t, then another company (in the case in my region: a company not nearly close to being as clean as we are) will take the market share.

    If theres a way this can be done then it’s the doctors that should be blamed for it since they’re the ones who pledge to save lives the best they can

    Why do pharma companies have to suffer.

    It would be better for us if the doctors didn’t want these gifts since we know we’re good and we don’t need to gift the doctors but the way the doctors are doing their jobs right now there is no way a Pharma company can survive without cooperating with the doctors.

    I use the word cooperating because we are forced to do so. No one likes spending money in things they don’t have to.

    1. Good lord! “Why do pharma companies have to suffer?” Why do people who aren’t rich have to bear the burden of experimentation and not have access to expensive drugs such as AIDS treatments so that some greedy capitalist can have a second house?

      And your quote “you have to give the doctors an incentive to sell your product” is exactly the problem in this industry. You do NOT want to give doctors incentives to do anything except give their patient the cheapest, most effective treatments for health.

      1. And the answer to this is to make it illegal for pharma co’s to gift the doctors. Level the playing field, if you will. Then, the pharma co’s that ARE doing the right thing by producing a better, cleaner, cheaper product will have the upper hand with the doctors who care for their patients. At that point, they can build their second home in the Hamptons with my blessing. Capitalism at its finest, right? Greed is the great distortionist. It induces people who may have started out with the right intentions to do things they may not have otherwise. Call a spade a spade, these gifts are thinly veiled bribery. However, until they are made illegal, as they should be, small pharma co’s cannot compete unless they participate. A tragic catch-22. This bribery interrupts the natural system of captitalism. Don’t blame capitalism, blame the system that allows those companies to bypass what is right, and allows the docs the opportunity to be swayed. Hold them all accountable for doing what is right, not what is easy.

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