Oh come on.... pharmaceutical reps are sales people. They give lunches to make personal contact with potential buyers in the hope that they can eventually get the doctors to prescribe their drugs. All sales people work this way. To suggest that they have altruistic motivations is ridiculous. If you really believe otherwise, I have some swamp land..err I mean waterfront lots, in Florida which I would be happy to sell you. I have personal control over a fairly large budget for Information Technology at my institution. I get lunches all the time. Nobody cares what's best for my institution. All of them claim that their equipment is the best.
The real problem with the pharmaceutical industry is that they fund their own research into the efficacy of their drugs. This is an intrinsic conflict of interest. Many new drugs that come to market are claimed to be far better than anything else out there, whereas if fact their published data shows only a marginal improvement,if any. And remember, the people that published the study were funded by the pharmaceutical company.
D.