Drug Company Reps Overheard

A friend just sent me an email about a conversation between two pharmaceutical company sales reps that she overheard. I think you'll find it interesting:

I just spent a very interesting lunch in a Southern California restaurant seated next to two sales representatives for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. The senior rep. was schooling the junior rep. in how to make it into the "big time" as a drug company salesperson by increasing her sales of psychiatric drugs, in this case the anti - depressant Effexor, which is approved by the FDA only for "major depressive disorders." Since no biologic marker is needed to "prove" the existence of a real disease in the case of "mental disorders" and doctors are free to prescribe nearly any drug to anyone, the sky is the limit with psychiatric drugs - - they can pass out prescriptions for them like peanuts at a ballpark.

In the 20 or 30 minutes I listened to the drug reps' conversation, not a single word was said about improving patient health or a single caution uttered about the extreme adverse effects of this drug - it was all about raising their own personal sales statistic.

They had charts of exactly how many total prescriptions for anti - depressants were filled by month in their sales area and exactly what percentage of those sales went to Effexor. They had names of doctors, with how many prescriptions and for what type of drug, etc., so they could easily see who to target and who not to bother with.

The senior member showed the younger one how to calculate an increase in market share and figure out exactly how many NEW prescriptions for Effexor that would require. Then, he told her to convince 11 doctors to agree to write "just five more 'scrips' for Effexor each week." Even if most of them "lied and didn't do it," he told her, she would still probably get five that would, and thus could meet her targeted increase in Effexor sales.

This, to me, was a pointed reminder that the psychiatric industry is not based around helping people who have actual diseases but is a willing and eager marketing tool for profitable, expensive and potentially debilitating drugs - with no thought whatsoever for the adverse consequences to any of the individual human beings who ingest them.