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# Good-Looking Drug Reps
- URL: https://thedailyeudemon.com/3170/
- Published: 2005-11-28T12:52:14.000Z
- Updated: 2005-11-28T12:52:14.000Z
- Author: Eric Scheske
- Tags: Essay, #wpChunk

I think everyone has noticed: drug company sales representatives are invariably good-looking. [This *NYT* article says many of them are drawn from college cheerleading squads](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/business/28cheer.html?hp&ex=1133240400&en=56d70b525fedece0&ei=5094&partner=homepage&ref=thedailyeudemon.com).

Of course, this is America, so if someone is hired based on a natural and superior trait, we don't like it. The alarm bells about attractive drug reps are beginning to go off, and equality-obsessed critics are looking for reasons--besides rank envy--to shut down the hiring practice.

> Federal law bans employment discrimination based on factors like race and gender, but it omits appearance from the list.

> "Generally, discriminating in favor of attractive people is not against the law in the United States," said James J. McDonald Jr., a lawyer with Fisher & Phillips. But that might be changing, he said, citing a recent ruling by the California Supreme Court, which agreed to hear an employment lawsuit brought by a former L'Oreal manager who ignored a supervisor's order to fire a cosmetics saleswoman and hire someone more attractive.

> But pharmaceutical companies deny that sex appeal has any bearing on hiring. "Obviously, people hired for the work have to be extroverts, a good conversationalist, a pleasant person to talk to; but that has nothing to do with looks, it's the personality," said Lamberto Andreotti, the president of worldwide pharmaceuticals for Bristol-Myers Squibb.

> But Dr. Carli, at the University of Michigan, said that seduction appeared to be a deliberate industry strategy. And with research showing that pharmaceutical sales representatives influence prescribing habits, the industry sales methods are drawing criticism.

> Dr. Dan Foster, a West Virginia surgeon and lawmaker who said he was reacting to the attractive but sometimes ill-informed drug representatives who came to his office, introduced a bill to require them to have science degrees. Dr. Foster's legislation was not adopted, but it helped inspire a new state regulation to require disclosure of minimum hiring requirements.