Are you brainwashing your clients?
In this article, the writer details some of the pretty common tactics used by pharma sales reps to build relationships with doctors. If you take one or two steps back, you realize that all of this is old hat, and has been part of the sales profession for any product or service for hundreds of years. The article talks about getting to know personal information. Giving gifts. Typical sales tactics.
Duh.
Now, the payoff, in the final paragraph:
The pharmaceutical industry employs 100,000 drug reps whose job is, first and foremost, to sell drugs. Their tactics are on par with some of the most clever and potent brainwashing techniques used throughout the world, including those used on political prisoners to convince them to denounce their home nations. Doctors are, in effect, being successfully targeted and influenced through advanced brainwashing campaigns designed to alter prescribing behavior and sell more high-profit drugs. Far from being immune to such techniques, it appears that physicians are remarkably susceptible to them.
Advanced brainwashing campaigns, such as those for convincing prisoners to denounce their home nations? Can we be a little over the top here with the hyperbole? Perhaps a bit more inflammatory language would help – say, some references to Nazi Germany, or Darfur. And just how is this article any different in its attempt to brainwash its readers, except that a free pen doesn’t come with it?
So, where is this author coming from…what is his agenda? Not hard to figure out, from a few choice quotes on his website:
“The information about health that I’m revealing in these articles, reports and books is all information you’re not supposed to know. Our modern medical establishment works hard to deliberately censor this information. I’ve learned that organized medicine simply doesn’t want people to know about the free cures, the simple prevention strategies, and the zero-cost treatments that reverse chronic disease.
“Real cures exist right now for diabetes, cancer, heart disease, depression, osteoporosis, and many other so-called ‘diseases.’ They are simple, straightforward, and readily available to virtually everyone. I can show any person how to reverse type-2 diabetes in a few weeks, for example. And I can teach anyone how to prevent and avoid every major chronic disease, using strategies that are largely available free of charge.
“But I’ve got some real answers for you: answers to life-long health. Answers that can show you how to be free of disease, free of all prescription drugs, free of pain and suffering, and free of the lies and deceptions of food companies, drug companies and the whole backward system of organized medicine.
“I can no longer stand by and watch the people of the world being exploited and victimized by drug companies and the FDA. I have to stand up and speak the truth about our system of modern medicine: the failure of med schools, the outright corruption of medical journals and medical organizations, and the utter ignorance of modern doctors concerning the true causes of health.
“I’m compelled to reveal the dishonest marketing tactics of soft drink companies, the destructive influence of food industry lobbying groups, and the systematic looting and plundering of our planet’s natural resources by Big Business.”
Everyone’s selling something – even when they attack others who are selling something!
(And what’s my agenda? I’d really like to see some straightforward honesty, whether in promotion of prescription drugs or “natural” cures, instead of unrealistic claims and dismissive hyperbole)
Sounds like Kevin Trudeau…although I did see something like this in a newspaper (on-line) article.
Setting aside hyperboles for a moment…
The truth is that doctors are as dependent on the same “disease treatment-centric” approach as the industry this author criticizes. If people become conscious about their own healthcare and really take a prevention approach, there would be little need for doctors to diagnose and prescribe and deliver care; in other words, most docs would go out of business- not necessarily a bad thing if it meant people are becoming healthier and self-reliant for healthcare. It is only when patients experience disease that doctors become “useful” and thus, can earn a living.
If indeed drug companies are “victimizing” people (this reasoning immediately assumes that patients are generally helpless and/or unthinking beings), then doctors are the #1 accomplices.
When we ALL (patients, doctors, drug companies, FDA) truly hold our own thinking accountable in the decisions we make, rather than passing the easy buck and flagellating others to “change”, then we may begin to do the most good for ourselves and for others.
Jane Chin
Jane,
Agreed. There’s more than enough victim mentality and blame gaming going on, along with over-reliance on both medical “miracles” and natural “miracles.”
A lot of healthcare needs to be simply that – taking care of our own health. There’s no lack of information about the benefits of exercise, responsible eating, temperance in things like alcohol and smoking – just a lack of will. Self-control is the best healthcare solution we have!
Steve,
In addition to personal accountability of the individual, doctors can do a lot of good by taking the patient educational role on a consistent basis, which currently is sorely lacking bc doctors need to “make a living from their business- the clinic.”
Take antibiotic resistance and obesity as 2 examples.
How many docs have given in to patient demands for Rx to antibiotic when they know it’s clearly a viral infection? Yet docs rationalize it as, “if I don’t write the script, this pt will just go to my competitor and get a script there.” Obviously, if enough docs stand up for the truth in the patient’s condition, then the patient will have little choice but to “wait out the viral load”.
How many docs have sooner written a statin or oral antidiabetic drug script than sending the patient to a registered dietician or clinical diabetes educator for behavioral modifications toward diet and exercise? But it costs $ for a doc to hire 2 additional headcount, and only minutes to do a quick exam, write a script, and see the next patient. Yet we all know that the first line of defense and treatment for most obesity/diabetes cases is diet and exercise.
It’s time that docs face up to the reality that they are running a business, as much as pharma companies are running a business. Just because you’re running a business does not mean you’re automatically unethical or “greedy”. Rather, if your core business values are aligned with ethical standards and adhering to what is truly “good” for the patient in the long run, then you find that your behaviors are influenced less than gimmicks or allegedly subversive – even “brainwashing” – tactics than otherwise.
Jane Chin
I’m a young physician in Singapore, and perhaps it’s naivety, but so far in both family and hospital practice what’s seen is an approach to patients that generally starts with conservative treatment first.
It’s a common straw man argument to say that doctors only cut/burn/poison (surgery/radiotherapy/drugs) while herbalists/health food folks talk about total health.
Wrong.
Doctors take the total approach, but with more weapons in their arsenal. Prevention, check. Disease control, check. Treatment of complications, check. Drugs, check. Physiotherapy, check.
For instance, in diabetes mellitus, the approach is to try lifestyle modification first (diet and exercise) for at least 6 months if the patient’s condition isn’t too bad. It’s also quick and easy to write a referral letter to the public outpatient clinic diabetes educator. If lifestyle modification doesn’t work, treatment escalates into oral hypoglycaemic agents.
And despite medicine being an business that seeks to put itself out of business, this is never going to happen because few are the patients that are truly fully compliant.
“But doc, it’s so boring to eat healthy. The stall underneath makes a kickass Ramly burger”. We love the ones that are, because like most people, we enjoy being listened to, and it doesn’t make that quit follow-up because they care enough about their health to come back for check-ups.
That said, there are unscrupulous doctors who prescribe antibiotics unnecessarily. We did have a patient who died from an infection she was only susceptible because of immunosuppression from an expensive drug prescribed by a private doctor for a condition diagnosed on very dubious grounds. Yes, these are the black sheep but I am thankful for our healthcare system that this is not common practice.