Many doctors attending ASCO, the big annual cancer conference, are leaving empty-handed this year. Sure, there have been plenty of scientific presentations, lots of data to mull. But where are the pens?! Tchotchkes are normally a mainstay of these confabs. But now that the drug industry pledged to stop giving away logo-laden pens , mugs, flash drives and the like to doctors, they’ve been much harder to come by at this year’s conference held in Orlando, Fla. Here’s how Thomas Gryta of Dow Jones Newswires describes the somber scene: “According to booth workers, traffic is drastically lower, and they blame the lack of giveaways. In years past, rows of doctors with bags would run from booth to booth, lined up like kids on Halloween.” That said, it’s not a lost cause for drug companies trying to

get some marketing mileage out of the conference. The doctors who are still coming to the booths tend to stay longer, drug reps told Dow Jones, and tend to have a genuine interest in learning about the drug or related science. Plus, there are still company-sponsored dinners, meetings and off-site educational sessions “that happen to occur in swank establishments,” Gryta adds. To get a feel for the tone at other conferences like this, read a dispatch from Peter Loftus of Dow Jones from a big cardiology conference a couple years ago. He described not only the scads of giveaways, but an amusement-park-like contraption from AstraZeneca in which docs could take a stimulated journey through an artery. Photo of ASCO 2008: ASCO/Todd Buchanan

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Drug-Maker Pens Are Endangered Species at Cancer Confab