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Dr. Drug Rep
- Thread starter Spine Specialist
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Yep, been there, done that. Gave up doing it a few years ago.
The money is great. They send you to nice places. You meet new and interesting people, and detail them.
With each meeting, you pay only the low, low price of a little more of your ethics...
The money is great. They send you to nice places. You meet new and interesting people, and detail them.
With each meeting, you pay only the low, low price of a little more of your ethics...
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you have to figure that if they are willing to pay $750/hour that the uptick on that investment must be a LOT...
i would say: how about you pay me $1,000/hour and I promise I won't talk to any other PCPs about how bad the drug can be???
or is that black-mail?
i would say: how about you pay me $1,000/hour and I promise I won't talk to any other PCPs about how bad the drug can be???
or is that black-mail?
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During my academic incarnation I did some drug company sponsored lectures but I didn't last very long. Early in my career I talked about the physics of blood pressure monitoring. Hardware manufacturers don't have the kind of money that drug companies have so I was usually just giving a talk without a commercial agenda. The Arrow people didn't see much point in sponsoring me to pimp their new PA catheters, and Critikon seemed to be selling lots of NIBP machines without my help.
Then I started to get interested in aspiration. Eventually I was invited by a drug company to give some dinner talks and things went ok. The sales reps liked what I had to say and there was no pressure to say things I didn't believe. It came to a screeching halt when I was invited to speak at a conference on prevention of aspiration by the manufacturer of an H2 blocker.
These meetings are carefully scripted shows. The first problem arose when they sent me my lecture - a complete script with slides. They have PhDs or something to write the lectures for you. I told them I have my own lecture and my own slides thank you very much, which caused great consternation because I was swerving out of their control.
We then had a rehearsal meeting in Boston, all expenses paid of course, at a very expensive hotel. A Major Name Brand Anesthesiologist, Ron, (I will leave out the last names) was running the show. He freely admitted he had no special academic interest in aspiration and indeed his lecture was on something totally unrelated to aspiration. I can't remember exactly, maybe AIDS or transfusions. Something with blood. It was that memorable. It was obvious to me that he was hired just to have a big name on the marquee. I wondered how much he charged for letting them use his name.
Jerry was another academic heavy hitter on the bill. I learned OB anesthesia working with him and like a lot of residents I thought he walked on water. That changed. We were in a conference room at the fancy Boston hotel and Jerry was running late. We were going through our talks and critiquing them and Jerry came rushing in apologizing for being late. He announced that he had not had a chance to read through the lecture but that we should just go ahead and put the slides up and he would read it through and see how it did for time. He was going to deliver a lecture written by someone else and let the audience think it was him saying it. That was when the hero worship died. The lecture was basically a boring rehash of all the studies that were done showing that X drug reduced the number of patient with pH less than 2 and gastric volume greater than 30 ccs, etc.
The next problem arose when I gave my presentation. One of the things I pointed out was that it's silly to use cut-off values like 30 cc or a pH of whatever. Is 29 ccs of stomach acid safe but 31 ccs is not? Will a pH of 1.9 kill you but not 2.1? I also pointed out that most studies used average pH, and Student's t-test, whereas pH is actually a logarithmic value and shouldn't be averaged. When I was done, Ron said that if we believed what I said then everything in Jerry's lecture was meaningless. I said I couldn't help that - I was presenting the data as I saw it.
Thus the gauntlet was thrown and the stage was set.
At the meeting Ron did everything he could to twist my words around and humiliate me during the panel discussions but without success because he was so transparent. At one point he claimed that something I said was confusing, and went on to misquote me in order to make it seem that I had contradicted myself. When I told him I was sorry that he was confused he went ballistic, shouting "I'm not confused! What you said is confusing!".
During the breaks people were asking me if I was taking my oral boards in front of 300 witnesses. I think the people running the meeting had a word with Ron because he settled down, but we never did go fishing together after that.
And that, my friends, is what goes on behind the scenes at drug company sponsored meetings (or as I call it "marching in the bull**** parade").
post script: I just saw that the forum software automatically puts **** when you write certain words. I just wanted you to know that I wasn't some dink who was afraid to spell out the word "bull****". Let's see how it does with Italian: stronzo, pompino, orecchione, minchia, merda, lumaca, belino, cacare, frocio.
Then I started to get interested in aspiration. Eventually I was invited by a drug company to give some dinner talks and things went ok. The sales reps liked what I had to say and there was no pressure to say things I didn't believe. It came to a screeching halt when I was invited to speak at a conference on prevention of aspiration by the manufacturer of an H2 blocker.
These meetings are carefully scripted shows. The first problem arose when they sent me my lecture - a complete script with slides. They have PhDs or something to write the lectures for you. I told them I have my own lecture and my own slides thank you very much, which caused great consternation because I was swerving out of their control.
We then had a rehearsal meeting in Boston, all expenses paid of course, at a very expensive hotel. A Major Name Brand Anesthesiologist, Ron, (I will leave out the last names) was running the show. He freely admitted he had no special academic interest in aspiration and indeed his lecture was on something totally unrelated to aspiration. I can't remember exactly, maybe AIDS or transfusions. Something with blood. It was that memorable. It was obvious to me that he was hired just to have a big name on the marquee. I wondered how much he charged for letting them use his name.
Jerry was another academic heavy hitter on the bill. I learned OB anesthesia working with him and like a lot of residents I thought he walked on water. That changed. We were in a conference room at the fancy Boston hotel and Jerry was running late. We were going through our talks and critiquing them and Jerry came rushing in apologizing for being late. He announced that he had not had a chance to read through the lecture but that we should just go ahead and put the slides up and he would read it through and see how it did for time. He was going to deliver a lecture written by someone else and let the audience think it was him saying it. That was when the hero worship died. The lecture was basically a boring rehash of all the studies that were done showing that X drug reduced the number of patient with pH less than 2 and gastric volume greater than 30 ccs, etc.
The next problem arose when I gave my presentation. One of the things I pointed out was that it's silly to use cut-off values like 30 cc or a pH of whatever. Is 29 ccs of stomach acid safe but 31 ccs is not? Will a pH of 1.9 kill you but not 2.1? I also pointed out that most studies used average pH, and Student's t-test, whereas pH is actually a logarithmic value and shouldn't be averaged. When I was done, Ron said that if we believed what I said then everything in Jerry's lecture was meaningless. I said I couldn't help that - I was presenting the data as I saw it.
Thus the gauntlet was thrown and the stage was set.
At the meeting Ron did everything he could to twist my words around and humiliate me during the panel discussions but without success because he was so transparent. At one point he claimed that something I said was confusing, and went on to misquote me in order to make it seem that I had contradicted myself. When I told him I was sorry that he was confused he went ballistic, shouting "I'm not confused! What you said is confusing!".
During the breaks people were asking me if I was taking my oral boards in front of 300 witnesses. I think the people running the meeting had a word with Ron because he settled down, but we never did go fishing together after that.
And that, my friends, is what goes on behind the scenes at drug company sponsored meetings (or as I call it "marching in the bull**** parade").
post script: I just saw that the forum software automatically puts **** when you write certain words. I just wanted you to know that I wasn't some dink who was afraid to spell out the word "bull****". Let's see how it does with Italian: stronzo, pompino, orecchione, minchia, merda, lumaca, belino, cacare, frocio.
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I am actively involved in "performing" lectures for several Pharma companies.
I get paid well, I am allowed to modify the slide deck to suit my opinions and the audience being lectured to.
I do not lecture for drugs I do not use as my first line agents or if I am asked to say something that is not well researched or is too marketing kishe.
I get paid well, I am allowed to modify the slide deck to suit my opinions and the audience being lectured to.
I do not lecture for drugs I do not use as my first line agents or if I am asked to say something that is not well researched or is too marketing kishe.
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Ok, it looks like Italian is not edited, and one of the English words made it through. So what I meant to say was "marciando nella parata della stronzata".
gorback,
You write so much ( interestingly). Do you also speak so much and long in real life? I mean, are you that kinda doc suffer from verbal diarrhoea who never let anyone go so easily from you? 😀 j/k keep posting..i love your looong posts.🙂
You write so much ( interestingly). Do you also speak so much and long in real life? I mean, are you that kinda doc suffer from verbal diarrhoea who never let anyone go so easily from you? 😀 j/k keep posting..i love your looong posts.🙂
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To paraphrase Mark Twain the reason my posts are so long is because I don't have the time to make them shorter.
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$25,000 per lecture.
Just kidding. 😀
Not appropriate to discuss sizes of things in a public forum.
Just kidding. 😀
Not appropriate to discuss sizes of things in a public forum.
