She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Monday, January 5, 2009

That's some fucked up shit right there

I'm sitting on a plane behind a drug rep from Pfizer, and watching over her shoulder with a mixture of fascination and horror. She's writing a "Practitioner Report." Here's a sample:


55082 (Stillwater)

Knowles (#24 potential, #88 actual)Continue with the increased attention and 'positive tension.' Celebrex sales still good but could be better. Befriend PAs, Keep up on Nap business.

Adrien (#10 potential, #21 actual) Way up since June, sky's the limit. Like's consistent but not too frequent contact. Continue with weekly call, schedule lunch in Feb. Celebrex down last couple months, keep after that.


How sick is this? She has a database that shows every physician and all the drugs they're prescribing, presented alongside alternatives (such as generics) and graphed over recent months/years. Something just feels so wrong about this to me. I know they're a business and they've gotta make money, but medicine should be about what's best for the patient. Why? Because everyone pays for drugs except the one making the decision (the "practitioner"). Publicly, the drug companies say that they're merely "educating" the physicians, but this little snooping shows the lie in that. Why rank physicians if you just want to make sure they know about the facts? The logic must be that their drugs are so good that the more you know the more you sell. Right.


I have an urge to publicize this. I have her name, and real names of the doctors. Does everyone know that they do this?

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3 comments:

Kafreen said...

I look forward to more posts tagged as "Evil."

January 5, 2009 at 11:27 AM
Jordan said...

I know it. I think a lot of other people do too. I'm not going to bitch here, but I hate. repeat: hate pharm companies and the pull they have with our government. My eyes opened about four years ago when medicaid paid for my grandfather's doctors' visits but he couldn't afford the prescriptions they doctor gave him. Yep: name brand. Generic not available. WTF? Wrong in so many ways.

January 8, 2009 at 1:18 PM
David Lee said...

Don't they still give golf clubs away with every 1000th order? Kidding aside pharm companys do give little incentives to doctors.
I have a set of Beethoven records (vinyl lp's) that was sent to a doctor from Berk Pharmaceuticals Limited. Funny thing is the records have matrix Number WMD 153.

July 12, 2011 at 2:14 PM

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