Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19968

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

Robotham J
Drug maker accused of scare-mongering
The Sydney Morning Herald 2004 July 31
http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/drug-maker-accused-of-scaremongering-20090619-cpta.html

Full text:

The drug company Baxter Healthcare has been accused of distortion and scare-mongering over advertisements designed to prompt people to request an expensive meningococcal disease vaccination from their doctor.

The ads, running this week in Woman’s Day, show the feet of a corpse with a mortuary label tied to a toe. The label peels off the page, and readers are asked to, “Take this to your GP and ask about vaccination today.”

The information on the mortuary tag explains that adults account for nearly half of all cases of disease caused by the C strain of meningococcal bacteria. Among the adults, two in 10 lose digits or limbs and one in 10 dies.

Drug maker accused of scare-mongering
September 13, 2007

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The drug company Baxter Healthcare has been accused of distortion and scare-mongering over advertisements designed to prompt people to request an expensive meningococcal disease vaccination from their doctor.

The ads, running this week in Woman’s Day, show the feet of a corpse with a mortuary label tied to a toe. The label peels off the page, and readers are asked to, “Take this to your GP and ask about vaccination today.”

The information on the mortuary tag explains that adults account for nearly half of all cases of disease caused by the C strain of meningococcal bacteria. Among the adults, two in 10 lose digits or limbs and one in 10 dies.
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But it does not explain that the disease affects only about 130 adults in Australia each year. Most make a full recovery.

The campaign is billed as “a community message from Baxter Healthcare”, and does not mention by name the company’s NeisVac-C vaccine. The advertising of prescription medicines direct to the public is illegal.

But the mortuary label includes Baxter’s name, and uses the same branding as the vaccine, which costs $73 and is not eligible for any government subsidy. Separate ads running in the specialist medical press alert doctors that “your patients may be bringing in coupons requesting vaccinations”, and explicitly mention NeisVac-C.

David Henry, a professor of clinical pharmacology at the University of Newcastle, said the advertisement was an example of “a serious but low-risk condition [being] exaggerated in the public’s mind by selective presentation of statistics … I think this is a gross example of disease-mongering.”

Professor Henry said the campaign was plainly intended to scare people.

Meningococcal disease was “not something the average Australian should be carrying in their head as a proximal risk … you’re at much higher risk climbing into the car every day”.

Hilda Bastian, a health consumer advocate and editor of Informed Health Online, said the campaign was “shockingly manipulative, and it was dishonest to call this a community message”.

Baxter did not respond to requests for comment.