Or is there some kind of pay-per-treatment incentive that will make doctors want to prescribe it?
(This isn’t a response about this particular drug or its manufacturer.) I think that generally, large pharmaceutical companies tend to use sophisticated methods to convert dollars into willingness-of-doctors-to-prescribe-their-drugs. I’m not talking about explicit kickback schemes (which are not currently legal in most places?) but rather stuff like paying doctors consulting fees etc. and hoping that such payments cause the doctor to prescribe their drug (due to the doctor’s expectation that that will influence further payments, or just due to the doctor’s human disposition to reciprocate). Plausibly, most doctors who participate in such a thing don’t fully recognize that the pharmaceutical company’s intention is to influence what they prescribe, and their participations is materialized via cognitive biases rather than by them acting mindfully.
Also, not all doctors are great at interpreting/evaluating research papers/claims (especially when there are lots of conflict-of-interest issues involved).
(This isn’t a response about this particular drug or its manufacturer.) I think that generally, large pharmaceutical companies tend to use sophisticated methods to convert dollars into willingness-of-doctors-to-prescribe-their-drugs. I’m not talking about explicit kickback schemes (which are not currently legal in most places?) but rather stuff like paying doctors consulting fees etc. and hoping that such payments cause the doctor to prescribe their drug (due to the doctor’s expectation that that will influence further payments, or just due to the doctor’s human disposition to reciprocate). Plausibly, most doctors who participate in such a thing don’t fully recognize that the pharmaceutical company’s intention is to influence what they prescribe, and their participations is materialized via cognitive biases rather than by them acting mindfully.
Also, not all doctors are great at interpreting/evaluating research papers/claims (especially when there are lots of conflict-of-interest issues involved).