Ray Moynihan gives us an inside look at one drug company's wining and dining of top doctors in The Australian. Excerpts:
"It was a glamorous Saturday night out in Sydney. The restaurant, the food, the wine and the calibre of guests were all first-class. The exclusive Guillaume at Bennelong restaurant sits atop the stairs at the Sydney Opera House, commanding one of the best views in the nation.
The restaurant's enticing degustation menu includes multiple courses, each served with a glass of one of the world's best wines, creating an unforgettable dining experience.
Among the 278 diners were some of the nation's top cancer specialists from our leading public hospitals. Some had brought partners, some were alone. All were there as guests of Swiss drug giant Roche Pharmaceuticals. At a cost of more than $65,000, Roche had booked out the restaurant and thrown a $200-a-head feast for the doctors.
"The gluttony of the whole thing was mind-blowing," says Karen McLeod, the former partner of one attending doctor. ...
Roche is officially arguing that the $200-a-head dinner was simple and modest. ...
Roche has quite an interest in blood disorders and cancer. Its top-selling drug in the world is MabThera, a cancer treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, which costs almost $10,000 a treatment."
Posted by schwitz at August 3, 2006 07:37 AM | TrackBack