It Wasn't A Free Lunch

A number of months ago, several physicians (I was one of them) sat down for a light lunch sponsored by a drug company which heavily promotes a drug on television to men with symptoms of prostate enlargement. After some chit-chat among the physicians, the two pharmaceutical company representatives launched into their permitted two minute presentation. They never got to finish. One of the physicians, an ophthalmologist, described the serious problems that the drug created for patients undergoing cataract surgery (which had been the subject of an article in a national ophthalmologic journal). Then one physcian after another express anger about the failure of the company and its representatives to be truthful and complete in their discussions of the drug with these physicians and in public advertising. For those two representatives, it was a learning experience: physicians become furious when pharmaceutical product safety is misrepresented through omission or comission.

I notice that the company's advertising now advises men considering the drug to tell their opthalmologic physicians that they take the medicine. Did the backlash from the physicians at the lunch table make a difference? Only the company will know, but you can bet that the experience has been replicated elsewhere and that some patients have been protected as a result.