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The annual meeting of the CCS, the CCC, is supported by hundreds of thousands of dollars from drug companies. The profits from this meeting support the other activities of the CCS for the next year. Many of these companies make statins. Now would the CCS choose anyone for the "Working Group" who was at all critical of the products of these supporters?
Here's what being a Grand Patron gives you. Probably the most important benefit is a list of all registrants which would include addresses and emails. The Grand Patrons can use this list for highly directed sales pitches. The advertising benefits are priceless. $50,000 is peanuts for the implied recognition of your products by all the cardiologists in Canada. And whenever the public looks at the CCS website on the CCC they can only assume that most of the cardiologists in Canada approve of the products of these Patrons. That is known as a vicious circle. The public pays high prices for the latest drugs; some of the profits are used to pay for heavy exposure of the drugs to the doctors who are prescribing the drugs; the public then assumes that the doctors approve of these drugs and maybe even ask for them. At the same time the CCS is also recommending doctors to be on the "Working Group" that set the guidelines for prescibing the drugs made by the Patrons of the CCS. So the public ends up subsidizing doctors who actively solicit Patrons to whom to sell their reputations. Is this professional?
No wonder the pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable.
While one is waiting for the talks to begin one is reminded of the generous sponsors. This looks like a freebee meant to ingratiate the CCS with their Grand Patrons. Ads between lectures are not on the list of benefits.
The largest booth was that of Pfizer, whose drug, the statin, Lipitor, is the biggest selling drug in the world, about $US 10 billion. They gave at least $50,000 to the CCS. They can afford to.
Do you know your "cardiovascular age" is code for do you know your "cholesterol", which is what they are measuring in the booth.
Pfizer also makes Caduet. See our experience with the marketing of Caduet.
