News roundup

"Cheerleaders Pep Up Drug Sales," New York Times reports

New York Janice Hopkins Tanne

US drug companies are hiring cheerleaders as sales representatives to promote drugs to doctors, the New York Times said on its front page on 28 November. The story claimed that drug companies were turning to cheerleaders as sales people because they were good looking and had enthusiastic outgoing personalities.

"Some industry critics view wholesomely sexy drug representatives as a variation on the seductive inducements, like dinners, golf outings, and speaking fees that pharmaceutical companies have dangled to sway doctors to their brands," the story reported.

Psychiatrist Thomas Carli, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, who has tried to limit access for sales representatives, told the New York Times, "You’ll never meet an ugly drug rep."

Several hundred former cheerleaders had become drug sales representatives, a principal at Spirited Sales Leaders told the newspaper. The sales recruitment agency has many former cheerleaders on its books and a related firm runs cheerleading camps.

Ken Johnson, senior vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the major industry organisation, complained that the article reinforced sexist stereotypes. In a letter to the New York Times he said that former cheerleaders formed only a small percentage of the drug sales force. Drug companies train their sales representatives, and doctors educate themselves by reading journals and reviewing clinical data, he said.

Jeff Trewhitt, a spokesman for the pharmaceutical manufacturers’ organisation, told the BMJ that drug companies have spent millions of dollars researching and developing products "so it’s very important that sales reps convey information in a useful, credible way or doctors will shut the doors in their faces. In a five to 10 minute meeting doctors will ask pointed technical questions that sales reps must answer or they hurt their credibility and the credibility of the company they represent," he said.

A female emergency room doctor in Ohio wrote to the New York Times saying she "smiled—no, laughed outright—that this made your front page." Although she accepted that there were many attractive young women sales representatives, she said that she had never been persuaded to prescribe a drug by a cheerleader for the local team.

The story gave no statistics on how many pharmaceutical sales representatives are former or present cheerleaders. Mr Trewhitt told the BMJ that the United States is home to an estimated 80 000 to 90 000 sales representatives. He said that a very informal survey of two or three pharmaceutical companies indicated that a quarter of their sales representatives had a background in health professions. They included nurses, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, and even a few doctors. He had no information on the background of other sales representatives, but research showed that several well known Americans had been cheerleaders in their college days. Among them were US presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt (from the days when cheerleaders were often men), supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and television personality Katie Couric.

"The needs of companies vary," Mr Trewhitt said, but all have comprehensive training programmes for sales representatives.