They have to cover the cost of all the useless crap they send you! I just cleaned out the box that is under my bed with all of my medical records.
Do you know what I found?

6 padded binders full of repetitive drug info and cds, rebif autoject that I never opened, 2 copaxone injectors, a travel kit from pfizer that has a cold pack and travel sharps container, 8 tote bags; 3 from copaxone, 3 from avonex, 1 from rebif, and one for Tysabri. The fleece blanket that one of them sent me, 4 hot/cold packs from copaxone, 2 squeeze/stress balls, about 20 freezer packs from avonex (because they packed 4 in each of the styrofoam coolers they sent the meds in), 15 pens, over 20 magnets, and I have no idea how many of their magazines I have thrown out in the last 2 years.

I mean I am all for getting cool free stuff, but i have to wonder just how much money these companies waste every year on trying to woo doctors and patients. And if i have all of this stuff, I can only imagine what kind of stuff they are sending to the doctors to write the prescriptions.

Plus they have to pay to have all of this stuff personalized with their company info (all binders and totes are embroidered) PLUS, they have to pay postage and they have to pay for the drug reps to go out and pester the doctors.

I just threw away ALL the binders with drug info from when I was trying to chose a DMD. The tote bags, auto injectors, ice packs, travel cases...

Also was looking at a natural health magazine and was amazed that 1/3 of the whole magazine was ads for drugs. Why do they advertize to folks who have no idea what this stuff is?! Folks walk into their MD office now to have the "detrol discussion" or the "boniva benefit" talk...sheesh! millions, nay billions in advertizing.

Can you imagine if CCSVI turns out to be our cure. In the USA alone 500,000 patients at 30k per year drop off their payroll. Yikes!

I would LOVE to see that happen.

I've been cleaning out my closet this weekend. Not only did I find a bunch of Copaxone crap, but I found a zillion pens from drug reps that my dad has given me over the years.

My dad is a nurse anesthetist and has been getting free pens from the drug reps for as long as I can remember. At school, I could always tell when my pen had been stolen, because when I found it again in the possession of the thief, I could tell them how to correctly pronounce the name of the drug, I probably could tell them what it was used for.

My aunt is a nurse practitioner and she gets an amazing amount of interesting stuff from the drug reps...which she usually regifts as christmas presents. She gave out remote control race cars one year that had advertising for Viagra all over them. (I didnt get one...if I had, I would have repainted it or put stickers all over it)

In the good ol' days when I was an RN I was on the hospital committee that decided what to do during nurses week. We poured over these catalogues of things to give them and they are dirt cheap when bought in bulk.

The new Federal rules are supposed to stop the gifting to Doctors and Nurses. The stuff to patients is not restricted. At a Biogen thing this week, got another umbrella and two very nice pens, Avonex and Active Source. And the dinner was very good, got two to-go packs, two days dinner.

Look around your neurologist's office the next time you're there. I'll bet 90% of the stuff you see is from one of the DMD makers.


Tom