Kent Skepowitz writes in Slate:
My drug-company habit started innocently enough—a pen here, a lunch there. But soon I hit the harder stuff: a trip to Italy in exchange for attending a symposium, tickets to a Mets game for my sons and me (and a chatty drug rep). Et cetera. There's a moment when each of us knows we have gone over the edge. For me, it was a trip to California where I met with a pharmacist for 30 minutes to talk about antifungal medication.
And so now I am in recovery. I have not taken money or meals or pens or trips or any of it for about a year. It is hard, but every day I wake up and tell myself, today I will not take money from a drug company. Today I will stay clean.
More at Slate
2 comments:
We should believe this is a true story of recovering x corupt doctor. He can not be blamed for his adiction. I was on the other side getting them adicted. It was easy, most docs are just "human" as the rest of us. Some resisted longer than others but eventually very few if any managed to refuse the monies, gifts, trips etc,. that were tangled in front of their noses. It is very seductive and honestly, how long can anyone refuse to take a free trip to a beautiful place far far away, the place that most of recepients would never go to, at least not at their expenses. Some trips that often include wife or husbnad, cost as much as $15-20.000. Business class of course.
Also my job was that I made sure that each of my "guests/adicts" knows very well what is expected from them in return. "Make sure you get verbal agreements from them to do..." I was reminded by my bosses.
Hopefully more will come forward. Remeber that doctor from down-under who even went to court to try to stop the practice (Novartis et.al.) but the industry regulating body said they would take care of it. Ha Ha! They would only cover it up as so far and/or make the usual apology for it and nothig happens.
Only the rest of us, including doctors like these can do it.
Interesting stat: Big Pharma spends $8,000 to $13,000 per doctor annually marketing its various products.
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