A pretty blonde sales rep sits opposite a doctor, ready to promote her company's best-selling drug. "So does Zestran work?" the doctor asks. "About as well as the others," she shrugs. "We're more expensive; actually we're almost double the cost." As for Zestran's side-effects, "Patients won't shit for a week." The flabbergasted physician wonders why he should let this drug anywhere near his patients. "Because I'm going to be perfectly straight with you," the rep replies. "You're going to know exactly what your patients are getting with this drug, the good, the bad, the ugly-not some sugar-coated version." If this scene sounds improbable, that is because it comes from a film. "Side Effects" is the story of a perky young political-science graduate who joins a drug company to promote medicines to physicians, but finds the hard sell too much. Before quitting her job, she decides to give doctors a dose of reality by telling them the com- plete truth about the products. Remarkably, her sales rocket, her bonuses swell and she finds it ever harder to leave.
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