Medicating the world unnecessarily?

Doctors are very busy. They have a lot of things on their minds and have to keep up with an ever increasing amount of information. The pharmaceutical companies try to help out best they can. Help that includes free meals, office supplies, tickets to various concerts and sporting events, and of course free samples of their products. That is what happens in this country. I knew this already and was disturbed by it and the possibilities that it influenced doctors to prescribe certain medications whether it was in the best interest of the patient or not. I did not know this practice takes place in the developing world where the gifts can be even more elaborate. Bringing a new drug to market is extremely expensive. Some estimates put the cost as high as $800 million. Most drugs never make it through the testing phase. This puts enormous pressure on the pharmaceutical companies to have existing drugs sell well and for their new ones to also reach as wide a market as possible. Outright bribery should not be the answer though. That is what this is. The governments in this country and the developing world need to take a closer look at these practices. But as pharmaceutical companies are also large donors to politicians I guess that is not going to happen...