Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20049

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: Magazine

Cowan S
Fighting my freebie addiction
Medical Observer 2005 Aug 557

Full text:

“GP groups should endorse strict new guidelines from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and not even accept pens or notepads from pharmaceutical companies, an ethics expert says. The guidelines advise doctors not to accept gifts, lavish meals, entertainment or conference tickets”. (Medical Observer, 1 July 2005).

It’s the skin-crawling that gets you. The ants running up and down and every which way along the dermo-epidermal junction. Scratch till you bleed, you just can’t stop them.

Formication, they call it in honour of the industrious little bastards. It’s a formicating nightmare alright. That and the sweat, and the myalagia, and the diarrohea, the pilo-erection and the insomnia.

My counsellor told me to take a few days off, to get through the worst of it, but just sitting at home with nothing to distract me would be unbearable. At least here I can guess how each patient will react to me.

Yes, madam, that sallow-faced, sunken-eyed, tremulous titubating wreck is your doctor. Remove the curtain of lank hair plastered across the brow, erase the haunted, hunted expression, shave off the five-day growth, straighten the bowed spine, stretch out the agonised cramped limbs and see, this wretched creature does indeed resemble a higher primate.

No doubt you’ve guessed my dirty little secret by now. Yes, I’m trying to give up pens. And sticky notepads.

Deja Vu

The crazy thing is, I’ve been through all this before. Only a year or two back they had me hooked on elaborate sandwiches. You know the story. I used to bring my own lunch, nothing fancy, just a Vegemite sandwich on rye, maybe ham if I’d seen a private patient the day before. Nothing gourmet, but perfectly adequate from a nutritional standpoint.

Then one lunchtime the pharmaceutical rep turns up, all causal like.

“Oh”, she says, “I’m catering for a function down the road and I over-ordered. Didn’t want to see good food go to waste. Thought you might be able to use them. See you later then.”

And just like that she’s gone. She left nothing else, no samples, no promos, no educational material, not even a card! Just the sandwiches.

Only sandwiches doesn’t begin to describe these babies. Each one was like a mini-delicatessen. Marinated artichokes, semi-sundried tomatoes, washed rind cheeses.

Boy, you could taste the difference between home-brand plastic ham on white sliced, and imported prosciutto smothered with antipasto dividing two crusty morsels of fresh baked Turkish!

Next week she was back, all husky voice, heavy lidded eyes and meaningful sideways glances. How did I like the… sandwiches? Mmmm. Oh yes, she husked, there were more where they came from. By the way, I’ve got a few samples here if you’re interested…

I knew her product caused hair loss, anorgasmia, scabies, and a lingering painful death, but what was the compared to these superb sandwiches?

It took months of hard work for me and my ethics counsellor, but I eventually learned to live on Vegemite again.

But once they’ve got you, they never let go. No sooner had I kicked the sandwiches than she was back, the time flaunting a clutch of ballpoints.

Thick stems, cushioned grips, roller ball nibs – they made the thing I was using look like a piece of chalk. Then she produced the killer blow. A stack of rainbow-coloured notepaper. Goddamn my weakness for stationery!

So here I am. Back in detox. I’ll stay clean this time, I swear. So long as they don’t start in with the soft toys.