Technology

You're not most doctors. Your a doctor. Also bribes and propaganda can affect you whether consciously or not. My own doctor of twenty years (now retired) only took pharma submissions through regular channels.

Seroquel came to mind because I personally witnessed someone who suffered from dystonia as a side effect of Seroquel, months before the class action that the side effect was understated (or misrepresented) when it was being tested for FDA approval.

That said, the lunches-for-overprescription pattern was discovered and highlighted during investigations into the opioid epidemic in the United States, in which, yes, a lot of lunches were bought by Purdue pharmacy representatives, and yes, a lot of correlating doctors over-presribed OxyContin, and whether or not it's a matter of neglect, laziness or willful malice to exploit the inflated medical market and poor Americans, the opioid crisis continues to this day, with 109,600 Americans dying from opioid overdoses in 2023.

I can cite plenty of other industries in which good press is bought and regulatory departments are captured with bribes, in pay or in kind. I'm personally familiar with the game industry and photography industry. But I can't help but be bitter about the medical industry, having seen the effects of bad medicine on friends and family, when not experiencing it personally.