The Art of Dealing Drugs
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 06:41PM 
Last year, pharmaceutical companies in the United States made $291 BILLION dollars.
There are approximately 307,500,000 people in the United States-- which breaks down to $946.35 spent by every man, woman and child last year on prescription drugs.
Incredible feat. Especially when you take into account that these products cannot be purchased freely by the average consumer. Each sale requires pre-approval by a licensed medical professional.
Drug companies depend on doctors to dispense their medications. Without the M.D. "middle man", sales would come to a screeching halt.
And these doctors don't make a single dime in commissions on the sales they broker, right? They're working for free on behalf of these pharmaceutical companies, right?
So how do they do it? How, despite the economic crisis we are in, did the drug companies actually make huge profits last year?
It's an art.
To sell their drugs, pharmaceutical companies hire former cheerleaders and ex-models to wine and dine doctors, exaggerate the drug's benefits and underplay their side-effects, a former sales rep told a Congressional committee this morning.
Shahram Ahari, who spent two years selling Prozac and Zypraxa for Eli Lily, told a Senate Aging Committee chaired by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., that his job involved "rewarding physicians with gifts and attention for their allegiance to your product and company despite what may be ethically appropriate."
Ahari claims that drug companies like hiring former cheerleaders and ex-models, as well as former athletes and members of the military, many of whom have no background in science.
"On my first day of sales class, among 21 trainees and two instructors, I was the only one with any level of college-level science education," Ahari told ABCNews.com on Tuesday.
During their five-week training class, Ahari claims that instructors teach sales tactics, including how to exceed spending limits for important clients, being generous with free samples to leverage sales, using friendships and personal gifts to foster a "quid pro quo" relationship, and how to exploit sexual tension.
Complete report: http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4438095&page=1
Read an older blog post for a first-hand observation of this process: http://drshiraki.squarespace.com/the-chiropractic-ensign/2009/5/20/the-lunchtime-drug-deal.html
Reader Comments (1)
Very interesting. Thanks for posting this.