Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19955

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: Magazine

Limprecht E
'Toe tag' ad stirs more debate
Australian Doctor 2004 Nov 3
http://www.australiandoctor.com.au/news/--8216;toe-tag--8217;-ad-stirs-more-debate

Full text:

MEDICINES Australia has defended the strength of its sanctions against drug companies breaching its advertising guidelines, despite failure to fine Baxter Healthcare for a meningococcal vaccine advertisement directly targeting patients.

The controversial advertisement, published in Woman’s Day and two other popular magazines, showed the feet of a corpse with a mortuary label tied to a toe. Underneath the peel-off label were the words:
Take this to your GP and ask about vaccination today”. The mortuary label used the name Baxter, but did not name its own product, NeisVac-C.

Following the Medicines Australia ruling Baxter will pay to publish educational material on meningococcal C in the three magazines in which the advertisement ran.

The initial complaint against the advertisement was made by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in August, but the ad was not removed until the beginning of October when the Medicines Australia sanctions were finalised.

Ms Nicola Ballenden, senior health policy officer with the Australian Consumers Association, called the sanctions a rap on the knuckles”

I don’t think companies take the code of conduct committee counsel very seriously,” she said.

They can still make a profit out of these ads. The benefits so far outweigh the potential costs that it is commercially in their interest to keep running these ads.

”But Ms Heather Jones, secretary of the code of conduct committee at Medicines Australia, said:

The committee has decided a fine was not going to do anything to correct the mistake. If Medicines Australia received several complaints about one company we would meet with the company. If they continued to breach the code there is always the option to refer them back to the TGA, which could withdraw marketing approval.”

THE CAMPAIGN

BAXTER always claimed its meningococcal C strain advertisements were aimed at improving public awareness of the disease. The advertisement, which urged GPs to ask about possible vaccinations, said that 20% of adult cases resulted in the loss of limbs or fingers and that 10% of patients died. It did not say that there were only 102 confirmed cases of the disease in Australia last year.