Editor - I worked as a drug company sales representative in the United Kingdom for several large companies for six years before entering medical school; my experience working for the industry is at odds with the article you published last month.¹

I agree that many medical students receive a “free meal, textbook, pocket text, or trinket” from pharmaceutical companies, but this is usually not at the discretion or behest of the sales representative. Drug company representatives have little power to control who attends sponsored meals and events or to stop students taking items from stands without asking.

At all times, I had to justify each penny spent at events, such as sponsored meals, and was told that as medical students “did not count,” in terms of my daily activity, their attendance was a frustrating waste of an allocated and finite budget.

It is not in a drug company representative's interest to speak to medical students. The average employee may last perhaps two years with any one company, before moving on to another, or leaving the industry. They have no long term strategy to recruit medical students, as, by the time the student is able to prescribe, the representative is unlikely to be around to claim any bonuses. Not once in six years did I meet a representative who would give branded items to students or have them at a meeting by choice. Das's article may have been factually correct but it assumes a cause and effect that simply does not exist.

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