Letters to the Editor

Doctors and Drugs

If anyone, over my last 31 years as a physician, thinks my decisions regarding the prescribing of medications are influenced by drug company handouts of ballpoint pens, pizza or even a steak dinner, they are naive [“Ties That Bind,” January-February]. The decision to use prescriptions, if truly needed, is based on experience, efficacy, side effects, patient acceptance and cost.

How the Congress of the United States, which is one of the most dysfunctional bodies ever assembled, can presume to regulate physicians’ exposure to pharmaceutical companies is an irony beyond my understanding.

I cannot remember the last time my wife and I received an all-expenses-paid golf vacation to the Caribbean so that I would vote to build a bridge to nowhere.

In “Ties That Bind” you quoted a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine as stating, “Doctors continue to insist that they can't be bought.” That may be well and good, but if so, why do the drug companies continue to spend so heavily on drug reps, gifts, trips, dinners and other perks for doctors?

While I agree that doctors may be swayed to prescribe certain drugs by free lunches, trips and other perks provided by drug companies, the article did not address the amount of free drug samples given to doctors that are then passed along to patients who cannot otherwise afford them.

This sample system is one way many people can receive needed medications.