Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11158

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Woodhead M.
Xenical advertising banned again
6minutes (Australia) 2007 Aug 10
http://www.6minutes.com.au/dirplus/images/6minutes/newspluspharma/10_08_2007.pdf

Full text:

Advertising of the weight loss drug orlistat (Xenical) to consumers is to be banned again from October after regulators agreed with critics that TV commercials were encouraging inappropriate use
of the product.

Reviewing a decision made in February, the National Drugs and Poisons Scheduling Committee confirmed that it would withdraw consent for branded advertising of the weight loss drug, which
critics such as Choice magazine claimed was being promoted to young women.

The committee said consumer adverts may promote use of Xenical beyond its approved indication, and pharmacists had found it difficult to counsel customers who came in asking for the product by name after seeing the ads.

The regulator acknowledged that adverts might encourage obese people to seek an effective treatment, but said this could also be achieved though nonbranded advertising campaigns about obesity.

The maker of Xenical, Roche, has strongly defended its right to advertise the drug and is now taking the case to the Federal Court alleging that the decision is flawed and not in the interest
of public health.

Professor Ken Harvey of LaTrobe University said the advertising ban created a bizarre situation in which herbal weight loss products with no evidence base were still free to advertise so long as they did not make specific claims.

This was because the TGA had much looser regulation of advertising for complementary medicines that were not registered as drugs. The TGA should check on evidence and impose tougher fines for unsubstantiated claims, he suggested.