Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20024

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Morgan JP
Drug Salesman: Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman
JAMA 2005 July 27; 294:(4):496
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/294/4/496.1.extract

Abstract:

by Jamie Reidy, 210 pp, $19.95, ISBN 0-7404-5039-9, Kansas City, Mo, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2005.

According to the book jacket, “Hard Sell exposes things about the American pharmaceutical industry you’d rather not know, and practices you’d wish weren’t happening. It reveals the questionable practices of drug reps, nurses and even physicians.” Thus offering a look at an industry “that touches nearly everyone in contemporary America,” the publisher clearly knows how to construct what author Jamie Reidy might term a “snappy IBS” (initial benefit statement, or opener, that grabs attention and engages interest, used by drug company sales representatives in detailing physicians).

Reidy’s book does provide some interesting insights into how drug companies train and use drug reps to advance their employers’ business interests. None of this material should surprise health care professionals, who understand that every business, including medicine, is subject to human foibles. Most of the insights and …