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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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![[Read Rapid Response]](/icons/misc/sectionDOWN.gif)
Would Ford sponsor your driving lessons?
- David R Warriner (2 September 2008)
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Free lunch: no one is fooled!
- Brad Abbey (3 September 2008)
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Re: Free lunch: no one is fooled!
- David G Tucker (4 September 2008)
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David R Warriner, ST1 Respiratory Medicine Northern General Hospital, Sheffield, South Yorkshire
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I am not naive enough to think that I am beyond influence but I do know that only the best things in life are truly free, not a faustian pact. I understand the basics of operant conditioning, as the food offered at sponsored meetings is never just a free lunch but an M&S free lunch, the representative is typically an attractive female in their mid thirties and the bounties of babylon await if you start prescribing the right drug. I usually avoid such meetings but if I do attend, I feel like the obnoxious and unpopular relative at family gatherings, with my peers feeling uncomfortable, making excuses for my silence and homemade limp sandwiches and I end up standing alone in the naughty corner. I am not without vices but I take responsibility for my own education and sustenance and urge the rest of us to do the same. Unless more of us stand in the naughty corner, we will continue to eat (and waste) food we don't need, attend meetings to which we don't learn and perpetuate the myth that this relationship is okay. It is not. Competing interests: I actively avoid all contact with pharmaceutical representatives and their offerings of a free repast. |
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Brad Abbey, Consultant to the Pharmaceutical industry London N20 0HT
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Medicines and medical devices are subject to trading in a free market in the UK, despite government attempts to control prices. Much of the effort to control promotion of medicines and devices to prescribers appears to assume, inappropriately, that prescribers are incapable of rational judgment and decisions. Similarly attendees at sponsored events are there voluntarily and commonly receive a variety of take home messages that they can consider (and reject if they so wish) in their own time. It’s not like buying a used car: you have time to make up your mind, or change it if you reconsider. The government is two faced about CPD for the medical profession in that independent comprehensive programmes are rarely in place, are victims of budget cuts, and sponsored events may be the best alternative. Perhaps sponsorship should first be withdrawn from other less health conscious markets – less professional football, fewer television channels and less party political propaganda. Health care professionals are intelligent individuals, and have a right to receive promotional messages in a free market, and their thinking and opinions should not only be those dictated by government. Competing interests: The author is a long established consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, and inadvertantly contributed to the government white paper on the pharmaceutical industry |
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David G Tucker, Therapist hants SP10
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To believe that one of the world's largest industries, employing some of the world's top marketing people, is wasting huge sums of money promoting products to people totally beyond influence, is at best, naieve. For this same industry to be spending about twice their research budget on marketing....and wasting it, is beyond belief. If just 50% of this vast sum was spent on promoting a return to consuming only fresh, natural foods, exercise, and sensible life-style choices.........much of the pharmaceutical business would not be required. Ah!..that explains quite a lot maybe? Competing interests: involved in the prevention of disease. |
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