A friend of mine is a pharmaceutical company sales representative. Her job is to drum up new business and keep the drug sales up. Her garage and car are full of drug samples that she drops off at doctor’s offices in her sales territory.

She used to be able to give some nice perks to her customers. Tickets to sporting events, nice steak dinners, weekend trips and the like. The laws governing these practices changed a while back with the passage of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (PPSA) — also known as section 6002 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 — and now she’s restricted to only being able to buy meals for her clients with a tab below $60.

My brother-in-law is a physician in California with his own practice. I asked him if he takes advantage of the free lunches that the big pharma reps offer and he said he does occasionally go to lunch with his pharma sales reps. I asked him if these free lunches (which of course include a sales pitch and a box of free drug samples) influenced his prescriptions for his patients.

He thought a bit before answering and said, “I try to be objective when prescribing, but the reality is that I build a trust relationship with my reps and when they have new drugs that some of my patients may benefit from, I’m more apt to give out the free samples and prescribe them because I’ve heard about them from my rep.”

Cornell University released the results of a study in 2020 entitled “After free lunch from drug firms, doctors increase prescriptions.” The study found that “Doctors prescribe more branded medications after marketing visits by the makers of those drugs.”

I realize that’s just one study and there may be others that differ. You never really know how objective these studies are, who funded them, and what the pre-conceived premises of the authors are.

Obviously, we need drug companies to produce safe and effective drugs for people and animals and we do indeed benefit from many of these drugs, but are the marketing practices of the drug companies overly influencing our objectivity?

In the world of animal medicine, drug company sales reps don’t normally call directly on veterinarians. Veterinarians are not typically taken out to lunches or given free samples. Drug companies do reach and influence veterinarians by sponsoring free seminars with lunches that allow those attending to get their needed continuing education credits. Often the speakers at these events are university professors who are sharing their research findings, which are also often funded by drug companies.

If you’ve ever been to any of the national beef industry meetings you’ve likely noticed the heavy influence of big pharma at the event. The trade show floor is full of big pharma booths, ads and information. Even while you’re in the bathroom, you may hear an ad on a repeating loop informing you about the benefits of a specific drug for your cattle. The keynote speaker is often paid for by an international drug company. It’s a treat to hear a famous person speak at a cattle meeting, and who else has the dough to dole out for a huge speaker fee? But, is the practice of allowing the deep pockets to have all the influence in everyone’s best interest?

The fact is, when an organization or school needs some big-time donations, drug companies are easy donors to seek out. Drug companies do a lot of good things in local communities with their generous donations.

My best advice is that we need a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to research and advertising funded by big pharma. Yes, we do need their drugs, and we appreciate all their generous donations, but we also need to apply some common sense and do our due diligence before we blindly swallow the "whole bottle of pills."

What’s been your experience with drug companies, or your views on their influence of our industry?

Big Pharma influence

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