WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- A survey of U.S. doctors finds that free drug samples influence prescribing, but physicians think other doctors are more influenced than they are.
In March 2003 the researchers surveyed 217 members of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and found more than 90 percent of the respondents thought it was ethical to accept free samples of a new drug from a pharmaceutical company representative.
Just over half thought it was ethical to accept a lucrative consultancy with a company if they were a "high volume" prescriber of one of that company's drugs, while one in three agreed that their decision to prescribe a drug would probably be influenced by accepting the samples, according to the survey published in the in the British Medical Journal ahead of the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Respondents felt that other doctors would be significantly more likely to accept the offer of a free lunch, an anatomical model emblazoned with a drug's name or a consultancy than they would, even if offered without free samples.
Most doctors said they distributed the free drug samples to their patients to help them out financially or for their convenience, but less than two-thirds said they did so because they felt the drug in question was particularly effective.
