Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19446

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

Metherell M
Berocca invigorating advertising claim 'misleading'
The Sydney Morning Herald 2011 Mar 16
http://www.smh.com.au/national/berocca-invigorating-advertising-claim-misleading-20110315-1bvv2.html

Full text:

AFTER presenting the makers of pick-me-up product, Berocca, with a health care product award, Health Department secretary, Jane Halton, may now be needing some of the product herself.

Or maybe not.

This week her own department’s regulators have ordered the withdrawal of the Berocca product’s advertising and found its claims to invigorate to be “unverified, likely to arouse unwarranted expectations, and misleading”.

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The upset has underlined the continuing challenge the department’s Therapeutic Goods Administration has faced in attempting to curb unsupported claims by over- the- counter remedies.

But yesterday an unbowed Ms Halton sought to make the best of the Berocca imbroglio.

Kay McNiece, the department’s spokeswoman, said the decision by the TGA’s Complaints Resolution Panel was “an example of the independent advertising complaints process working effectively – even an industry award-winning advertising campaign must comply…”

Ms Halton had not known which organisation had won the award until the night of the presentation last November, the spokeswoman said.

Ken Harvey, a longtime campaigner against products making unproven cure claims, lodged the complaint against Berocca Performance Twist N Go product advertising material, a month before the award.

He said it was “particularly ironic” that the award was presented by Ms Halton in recognition of the product’s alleged contribution to “quality use of medicines” a key part of national medicines policy.

“This is yet another example of how large sales (and even marketing awards) can be achieved by unethical promotion of complementary medicines.

“Quality use of medicines cannot be achieved if sponsors of therapeutic goods promote products with claims that are inaccurate, misleading, deceptive and incapable of substantiation,” said Dr Harvey, an adjunct senior lecturer at La Trobe University’s School of Public Health.

He said after years of calls for firmer regulation of remedy claims, the TGA should respond to the consumer and health profession concerns “to ensure that the penalties for unethical promotion are greater than the profits achieved by such behaviour”.

Neither Ms Halton nor the Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, would respond to the question of whether the award for the Berocca should be rescinded.

A spokesman for the Australian Self Medication Industry said the award would not be rescinded.

The awards were to recognise “outstanding performance in keeping with the quality use of medicines. They are not an endorsement, nor do they seek to make representations about particular products”, the spokesman said.