Drug reps promote their own bad images

Editor - Anderson's account of life as a drug company medical representative initially left me feeling a certain amount of guilt at the number of times I have viewed representatives as a source of stationery.¹ Any guilt soon disappeared, however, as quickly as the sandwiches do at a lunch sponsored by a pharmaceutical company.

Medical representatives often do not help themselves in their task. A drug company representative hounding the already harassed consultant or general practitioner will obviously not find a receptive audience. As a result tourniquets and note pads are brandished to grab a doctor's attention and ultimately to encourage him or her to prescribe the company's product. Yet although this type of sales technique is well recognised Anderson condemns clinicians for turning this situation to their advantage.

Should a medical representative get a captive audience - for example, in the shape of a lunchtime meeting, the "information coming straight out of the research laboratories" is inherently biased, it comes from a source with a financial interest in the information. As we strive for evidence based practice, the days of the rep providing us with information on prescribing must surely be coming to an end as Griffith advocates.² Evidence based medicine relies on the doctor assessing all the available evidence - both good and bad, and from all sources - and then forming an opinion. Information from one source, with a commercial interest in the results, must be viewed as questionable in value in such a process, or at least guilty of bias until proved otherwise.

Drug company research - when ground breaking, or at least interesting to clinicians - is often lost in the slick and selective sales pitch given by the representatives. At the end of a presentation by a drug company representative that I recently attended a consultant commented, "if you would just cut out the bloody sales pitch you might have something worth listening to." I started out in clinical medicine with no particular view on pharmaceutical representatives. The more I meet in my clinical training, however, the more I sympathise with that consultant.

Pardeep S Jhund, fourth year medical student, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ
Email: 9502693j@student.gla.ac.uk


studentBMJ 1999;07:394-436 November ISSN 0966-6494

1. Anderson K. The life of a medical representative - a little food for thought. studentBMJ 1999;7;336. (September.)
2. Griffith D. Do today's doctors really need pharmaceutical reps? studentBMJ 1999;7;337. (September.)