Pharmaceutical Junk

I cleaned out a drawer in my desk today.  There were a lot of pens, many of which had drug company logos attached to them.  As I looked over this menagerie, I was mildly awed and moderately amused by the variations on a pretty mundane medium.  I ended up taking a bunch of pictures, and hope to share them over time, giving my take on what makes them, uh, special in their own way.
The subject is made more interesting by the fact that we no longer get these because of the incredible influence they had on doctors\’ prescribing habits.  My wife had to physically restrain me to keep me from calling patients insisting that Viagra was right for them.

So let\’s start with a Caduet pen.

Caduet was the genius of Pfizer pharmaceuticals, mixing two very popular drugs and was the first of many drugs to use the word \”duet\” in its name.  It combines the cholesterol drug Lipitor with the blood pressure drug Norvasc, serving as kind of anti french fry.  This pen is very big and fat, and is made out of metal.  This makes it heavy, and while not ideal for the front shirt pocket (and a little embarrassing if put in the pants pocket), it is very effective when used in hand-to-hand combat.

I got this at a booth at the annual conference for the American College of Physicians.  They were not only offering this pen/weapon as a gift, they offered to put my name on it for free!

I didn\’t give them my real name.  I got a lot of funny looks at the booth, but nobody challenges me in hand-to-hand combat any more.