Is a coffee mug steering your doctor's prescription-writing pen?
What influences your doctor when he writes a prescription? Your condition? Sure. The track record of a particular drug? Probably. Well, how about his pen? Or more specifically...what's printed on that pen? We've all seen the little gifts pharmaceutical companies dole out to doctors. But until now, the assumption in policy discussions has always been that these small gifts don't really influence your doctor's prescribing patterns. In fact, while hospitals often discuss restrictions on larger gifts, these small offerings stay below the radar. But a new study in The Archives of Internal Medicine suggests that, when it comes to marketing, no freebie is too small. It reports that fourth year medical students from the University of Miami had stronger positive feelings toward Lipitor than toward a generic competitor that costs less money. Especially once researchers fired up the marketing engine, providing students with all manner of small items bearing the Lipitor name. At the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, such gifts are not allowed. And students' attitudes toward Lipitor, once they started receiving the marketing gifts, actually became more negative. Researchers suspect that negative school-level attitudes toward marketing helps students there to maintain a less biased view of drugs. In fact, the school actually provides warnings about specific persuasion tactics used in pharmaceutical marketing. Before researchers attempted to influence students, most students from both schools viewed Lipitor more favorably. It wasn't until they whipped out the marketing that Miami students shifted their preference more toward Lipitor and Pennsylvania students went negative. Of course, researchers noted, many doctors believe they aren't susceptible to these influences, because they're medical experts. But, however subtle the influence might be, having the word "Lipitor" printed on a pen or a mug does in fact effect the way doctors view that drug. It could just be a function of having the word constantly on his mind. Now that we know the influence is there, the solution seems clear to me. No more gifts from Big Pharma—not even a cube of notepaper. When I visit my doctor, I don't want to have to wonder whether or not the thing that pushed him over the edge in writing that prescription was the pen he's holding. And other medical schools need to follow the example set by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine—with warnings in place about how marketing works and how its influences can be avoided. It's funny—the drug companies go on and on about how much it costs to produce their drugs, and that the cost has to be passed on to the consumer. Of course, they cry that it's all the cost of research and development. But how much of that money is spent on advertising and on these insidious little gifts? Sources:
"Behavior: Small Gifts Found to Influence Doctors." The New York Times (www.nytimes.com), 5/19/09.
"Effect of Exposure to Small Pharmaceutical Promotional Items on Treatment Preferences." Archives of Internal Medicine, Vol 169, No 9, 5/11/09. | 
