Richard Meyer, author of World of DTC Marketing Blog, is a big believer in physician surveys, including the survey that the FDA intends to do regarding how physicians feel about direct-to-cinsumer (DTC) advertising.<\/p>\n
Rich was interviewed on HuffPost Live recently along with a health reporter and former Zyprexa Drug Rep, Shahram Ahari, who now is a consultant for Pharmedout. The 30-minute interview — see embedded video at the end of this post — was titled “Big Pharma’s Pill Pushing.” The description reads: “Big Pharma spends almost twice as much on promotion as it does on research and development. Drug company revenues climbed more than $200 billion in the years between 1995 and 2010 and so did the number of addicts. How can this be better regulated?”<\/p>\n
Rich did his best to defend the drug industry in such an obviously biased setup. The part of the discussion I found interesting in light of my recent post about the FDA physician survey (see “Is FDA Doing DTC, Social Media, & Professional Market Research On Behalf of the Drug Industry?<\/a>“) was Rich’s comments about a similar survey by CMI\/Compas, which I also wrote about (see “Most Physicians Agree That DTC Advertising Leads to Inappropriate Prescribing — by OTHER Doctors, Not Them!<\/a>“), and Shahram’s reveal of how pharma sales reps view physician surveys. Here are the two relevant excerpts:<\/p>\n