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When it comes to healthcare, what patients want is simple. The best treatment, with the fewest side-effects at the best price.

What is the goal of a Pharma Rep? It’s to schmooze doctors and convince them to prescribe their own company’s treatments regardless of whether another treatment is better, has fewer side-effects or is a generic that is far cheaper with a better-known safety profile.  They are given five-figure and inflated six-figure salaries to charm and bamboozle doctors with cherry-picked data. Their very purpose is to create a fog-of-war that makes evidence-based prescribing harder rather than easier. They are a glaring indication of the dysfunction of the system – they shouldn’t exist! Like all pharma advertising their salaries are accounted for in the cost of medication, meaning they have an inflationary effect on the cost of drugs. Every time the government or private insurance pays for a pill, it includes all the costs of propagandizing doctors to make worse prescribing decisions. We are building our own prison!

Clearly, the only people informing doctors on what to prescribe should be impartial authorities trying to get at the truth. But down here in the real world, almost all continuing medical education conferences are funded by pharma. Who is going to represent the public?

One day all this propaganda money must be recalled and turned over to paying external auditors to sift through the data, ascertain good studies from bad, and collate the evidence for the information of patients and doctors. They will highlight where more research is needed and run head-to-head trials. They will create accountability by informing journals, regulators, the public – and where necessary the media – of where the objectivity of science has been compromised. All the money is there to do it – it’s just going to the wrong people!