> > --- In [email protected], "shanti2218411" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > One of the most powerful elements of any effective > treatment whether psychiatric or medical is HOPE. The > instillation of hope will frequently evoke the placebo > response.
The mere act of "doing something" (taking a pill daily or multiple times daily) often triggers the placebo response. I agree with you that a major factor in the apparent success of these drugs is hope. Unfortunately, another major factor contributing to how often they are prescribed is cold, hard cash. I dated a nurse in Santa Fe who worked for one of the most successful psychiatric clinics there. What she told me of *common* practices in the doctor/drug salesman relationship were shocking. You seem to be in the field yourself. Perhaps you could comment on this from your own experience. My friend the nurse told of drug salesmen who offered the doctors free vacations to Hawaii for prescribing certain "guotas" of certain drugs. Or who actually offered cash payments to them, based on numbers of prescriptions. Or who contributed to the doctors' income directly by giving practices that had their own pharmacy *huge* quantities of the drugs free so they could make 100% profit on selling them, as opposed to only 50% profit if they'd had to purchase the drugs from the company. The "free merchandise" stops being free after three or four months, but by that time many of the patients have an ongoing pre- scription for the drug in question, so the doctors have to prescribe more, and their pharmacies have to order more, and this time pay for it. It's the counterpart of the schoolyard drug pusher saying, "The first one's free." This practice seems to me to be the drug industry equivalent of "spiffs" in other sales situation. If you ever shopped for a stereo in the 70s through the 90s, you know what spiffs are. Spiffs are pay- ments made by the manufacturer directly to the sales- person, as a reward for selling its merchandise. The spiffs are *in addition to* any commissions the sales- person earns from the company he works for. The company most famous for doing this was Pioneer. Try to remember back...when you entered a stereo store and asked, "What's the best equipment you sell?" how often the answer was "Pioneer." It wasn't. But the salesmen made more money for selling Pioneer equip- ment than for selling any other brand. Giving doctors large quantities of a new drug for free so that they *automatically* make more money by prescribing that drug than one of its competitors, or by not prescribing anything at all, seems to me to be an equally abhorrent practice, one that entices the doctor to care more about making money than he does about his patients' welfare, or about telling them about the possible side effects of the drugs. Unc To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
