There's a recent post by Orac about the "'swag" given to docs by drug companies at medical meetings. It reminds me that when I was in med school, my class was -- far as I know -- the first ever to refuse the personalized black bags traditionally given to students by Eli Lilly Company. I was of two minds.
My consciousness was a little late in the raising. It hadn't yet occurred to me back then that there were issues with taking goodies from those guys. We were also in the midst of the Vietnam war, and my class was active in protests. I attended a meeting in which a moratorium on classes was being planned, for the purpose of war protest, and the dean -- a bullet-headed guy much admired by all -- burst in and, in his most gravelly of the graveliest of voices said "What we need is a moratorium on bullshit." So it was a transitional time; but things were beginning to dawn on me. (By graduation, I was one of only a few wearing a "peace-sign" armbands at the ceremony. Ironically, I'm pretty sure the only member of my class to serve in Vietnam was me. And I'm glad I did.)
I'm proud to say that when I went into practice I was -- until there evolved a like-minded clinic-wide policy -- one of the very few in a large clinic to refuse to see drug reps; nor did I -- despite the attraction of great restaurants and a the occasional gratuity -- attend dog and pony shows put on in the name of some new drug or another. (Truth: I went to one, and felt dirty.) But back then, I wanted the damn bag.
"Right on," I said, gritted teeth hidden behind a powerless pasted smile, signing on to the class-wide refusal. Fuck The Man. But I wanted the damn bag. I'd worked hard; med school was a goal sought and achieved, getting the MD sheepskin in one hand and a black bag engraved with "Sidney Schwab, MD" in the other was something I'd envisioned for a long time. Screw activism. Gimme the bag. In the end, of course, I didn't take it. There was always my grandmother...
During my internship there was a company hawking a very long IV catheter, to be inserted in the arm (a theoretically safer route than some others) and threaded far, to where it could be used to measure central venous pressure, or to provide high-calorie intravenous feedings. Today such tubes are routine, and work well. Then, there were problems with the first iterations: inflamed veins were nearly universal. At our weekly conferences, complications were regularly reported. But the rep.... the rep.... She was a beauty. We were (excepting the one female in my group) a bunch of overworked and underpleasured guys. Her blond hair, her sweet smell. Her lovely form, those welcoming, eager br.... (Sorry. My wife reads these posts...) Suffice it to say that whatever the latest problem, she had a way of sidling up and explaining it away and talking us into using the catheter again. And again. And oh yes, oh yesss, again. Standards? Yeah, I have 'em. But don't we all have a price?...
