Medical Students Organizing Protest Against Drug Company Marketing

A "growing" number of medical students -- and some teachers -- are joining a movement to limit the pharmaceutical industry's efforts to "woo young doctors as future customers," the Wall Street Journal reports. Drug makers have begun to offer medical students perks, such as lunches and promotional items similar to those they give doctors, to persuade future physicians to prescribe their medicines. While the drug industry has issued voluntary guidelines to curb "the most egregious types of direct-to-doctor marketing," it says it will continue to market to medical residents and students so long as teaching hospitals continue to permit the practice. Drug sales representatives are "welcome at most medical schools and teaching hospitals, and many students and faculty members like the perks," the Journal reports. In 2001, the pharmaceutical industry spent $16 billion on marketing efforts to physicians and medical students, the Journal reports. Jerry Avron, a Harvard Medical School associate professor, said, "The [drug] reps know it's one thing to reach a doctor in practice, but another thing altogether to reach somebody who has a whole career ahead of him." Some medical students are launching efforts to counter the drug industry's marketing efforts, including two Harvard Medical School students who proposed that the Massachusetts physicians' association adopt a resolution that doctors, residents and medical students refuse to accept industry gifts. However, during a public hearing, many doctors defended the drug industry's tactics, and the group decided to give the issue further study. Members of the American Medical Student Association took a stronger stand during the group's annual meeting in Houston in March, where they approved by voice vote a resolution calling on all doctors, residents and medical students to refuse industry gifts. The measure also calls for hospitals and residency programs to eliminate pharmaceutical company lunches and lectures. But Jeff Trewhitt, spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said, "It is an insult to assume new young doctors don't have the ability to exercise independent judgement about the information disseminated at lectures." He added that such measures are "irresponsibly suggesting that doctors should automatically walk away from lectures that could convey important technical information about diseases and medicines that treat them" (Adams, Wall Street Journal, 6/24).