A Rival to Botox Invites Doctors to Party in Cancun, With Fireworks, Confetti and Social Media Posts

It never ceases to amaze me how cheaply people can be bought for.

Sounds pretty gross to me (the pseudo-bribery, not the product itself). The FTC needs to have more teeth regarding enforcing social media disclosing.

“Some doctors described Jeuveau as “the happy toxin...” “Happy Toxin” - now there’s an oxymoron for our age!

If you look on the Evolus website, it identifies doctors you can go to who use their product. I would guess that many of those listed are among those who went to Cancun. It certainly seems like they are allowing Evolus to use them in return for getting more patients.

Hmm... Anything that has "Tox" as part of its name should be avoided. "tox" is short for "toxic". No thanks.

"There was poolside socializing, free gifts and an oceanfront dance party..." Just curious, what other kind of "gift" is there?

Disgusting and unethical behavior. Do these doctors really believe their own spin on this meeting and their involvement in it? While Big Pharma justifiably gets blamed for pushing opioids, we seems to give doctors a pass for their role in the epidemic as the drug pusher...

More and more physicians are turning to careers outside of medicine and/or supplementing their careers with instagram/snapchat accounts and/or youtube videos. See: "A Day in the Life of a Surgery Resident." "Watch a Real Doctor Watch House MD." "DrBoobJob's Snapchat" The social status of a physician in 1970 was made up of the following: respect bordering on worship, appreciation, awe and esteem. Haircuts were free, friendly smiles in the streets, maybe a free glass of wine with dinner. At that time, with how hard those doctors worked and the degree of their intellect, maybe that was deserved. Although this was also the time of free cruises to St. Lucia, outrageous paychecks and minimal debt. That said, physicians today are: vilified as whining millionaires despite working the same hours with outrageous student loan debt and lower reimbursement (from the real billionaires in the insurance industry) and are trusted less than your local chiropractor, homeopath celebrity (gwyneth paltrow), primetime quack (Dr. Oz) and high school drop out yoga instructors. I have no doubt that with time physicians and the practice of real medicine will continue to mold to fit this twisted social persona better and better. Doctors will take the easy road, start doing consulting, helping to sue other doctors, living for those instagram likes. And healthcare in this country will continue on the current downward trajectory towards clinical incompetence and financial instability.

This is a country of legalized corruption and, with that, the loss of ethics by the medical profession. The phrase 'money is the root of all evil' is true after all.

After the medical community launched the Boxer Rebellion American style causing the current opioid addiction that is draining the country and causing families to fracture across the US, the medical community's credibility is the Hypocritical Oath- the vow to make money at all costs. I don't and won't trust doctors.

For this physician there is no ethical dilemma. Wrong is wrong

When they start holding these meetings in Racine, Wisconsin or Bayonne, NJ I'll believe they are really educational.

"In an interview, Dr. Devgan said it was standard practice for pharmaceutical companies to cover her expenses to medical meetings, and she did not think it was necessary to disclose this." Sounds to me, a former family medicine educator, this doc needs some continuing education on ethics.

The "influencers" instead got influenced.

Kudos to the Times for revealing this obscenity. from a Primary Care doctor for 40 years.

Is it possible to obtain a list of all doctors who attended this party?

I find it ironic that plastic surgeons and cosmetic dermatologists have working weekends....let alone working weekends in Cancun at a 5 star hotel on someone else's dime.

If taking these physicians on lavish trips did not influence their recommendations to patients, companies would not do it. Even a physician says that he or she is not influenced by the company's gifts and benefits, he or she is lying. Whether he or she is lying to their patients or to themselves may be in question. But he or she is definitely lying.

When a government deregulates... everything goes. Who’s complaining? Obviously not the doctors, not the Trump Administration? Not the imbeciles overseen those government institutions?

How can any sensible people put their life in the hands of these clowns??

Funny how none of the docs wanted to respond...this tells me they know it’s Spon Con (sponsored content). Confetti throwing?

First: Numerous studies have shown that gifts from pharmaceutical companies definitely influence physicians' prescribing behavior, despite the physicians' insistence that they do not. Second: These videos are grotesque. What in the world do these young doctors hope to gain by publicly posting videos of themselves cavorting, splashing in a swimming pool, and gushing poetic about a product? This is serious stuff. I would think that patients would be disgusted seeing one of their doctors behaving like a narcissistic child. Third: The hospitals and specialty boards who credential the doctors featured in this article shold take notice. I suspect this is not the first time any of them have accepted lavish gifts from a drug company, and I suspect most hospitals have compliance policies agaimst this sort of thing or at least requiring disclosure. If so, and if these physicians violated policy, they should be disciplined.

So many people with such low self esteem , unable to accept who they are , but willing to become something else .

The Times renders a useful service by exposing or investigating the corrupting influence of industries on any profession, including the medical.

Sad, just plain sad. I've been a MD in practice since the 90's and I thought most of my fellow physicians had learned long ago that the costly dinners, "working" vacations, and even pens given by pharmaceutical companies were a calculated and effective investment in influencing physicians' prescribing practices. Physicans being courted by pharma companies were/are told they are "thought leaders" in a psychological ploy, which simultaneously appeals to one's ego and also validates the physican/pharma financial relationship under the guise of a pseudo-academic premise, in the event that the physician has any nascent misgivings about accepting these financial incentives. And of course some MDs just have no problem accepting what are basically bribes, for many different reasons. Ultimately, if MDs do not stop engaging in these behaviours, I suspect that regulations will be forced upon our profession that will potentially stop many legitimate interactions with pharmaceutical companies.

The concept of this type of marketing has always been obscene (says this MD of 50 years). Fortunately I made a determined effort to always be contrary enough to not participate in such outings or events. Made my life much easier and hassle free. But in this particular case I don't really care too much: this is a product designed solely for voluntary cosmetic use. The docs and the patients want this stuff so that 1. the former can make even more moolah from doing cosmetic procedures, and the latter since they will be told the stuff is much better than the older ones presently being used. The market, in this case, will determine the fate of the product.

The author here might want to do a study on just how much Americans trust their doctors anymore. For profit, corporate healthcare makes patients suspicious of recommendations for yet another expensive screening, a new drug costing many thousands, a procedure introduced with razzle dazzle. There seems to be no end of it.

When I was an anesthesia resident at MGH in Boston, the makers of Sublimaze (the brand name for fentanyl) took many of us out for a steak dinner to educate us about this new and better (less respiratory depression, they told us) drug. Afterward, I found myself and my fellow residents increasing our usage of fentanyl. This type of marketing costs billions, and the bottom line is that these companies would not do it unless it worked to influence doctors. Any of the doctors who went to Cancun and say that they will remain neutral about this drug are just fooling themselves. The data does not support them.

If you can't trust a medical doctor with a masters degree in public health, who can you trust?

Yep, ya gotta love profit-driven medicine. Only in America, where absolutely nothing is sacred nor above the almighty dollar.

I’m personally a lot more concerned about the recent conflict-of-interest scandal at Sloan-Kettering involving their Chief Medical Officer and other high-ranking officials or Big Pharma companies willing to bury the risk of suicide in children on SSRIs for nothing more than basic greed than Instagram marketing for an elective outpatient cosmetic procedure.