Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2827

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

Greenberg D.
Cleaning up the drug trade
New Scientist 1974 May 23; 62:491

Abstract:

At hearings of the United States Senate health subcommittee of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, former sales representatives testified that the firms they had worked for tutored them in employing an assortment of gifts and fast-talk gimmicks to make their way past nurses and receptionists. Once with the physician they did not bother to point out the possible hazards of their company’s products. In 1973, companies sent some 2000 million free samples through the mail to doctors. Senator Edward Kennedy is introducing legislation that would ban unsolicited free samples and require detailers to complete government-certified training courses and when recommending a drug to a physician would be required to give him or her written information about undesirable side effects.

Keywords:
*news story/United States/sales representatives/drug samples/ quality of information/ regulation of promotion/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: DETAILING/PROMOTIONAL TECHNIQUES: SAMPLES/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: DIRECT GOVERNMENT REGULATION