Abstract:

From 1948 on, the pharmaceutical companies, mainly American, began to build enormous sales of branded drugs by promoting to the medical profession. In the United Kingdom their main customer has always ultimately been the National Health Service and this pattern has gradually spread across Europe, so that either the government or a government backed insurance service is the real purchaser of the products. In America this is not yet so, but the signs are that Medicare will extend and the European pattern gradually come into being. Normal promotion, which the industry developed, falls simply and easily into three identifiable portions.