The Food and Drug Administration's Bad Ad Program recently received complaints after reality TV star Kim Kardashian raved about a pill that relieved her morning sickness.
Because her social media posts didn't disclose any side effects or dangers, they were deemed a violation of federal drug advertising rules. But some experts say misleading information about other medical products is slipping under the radar.
Take for example an ad spotted on the back of a Chicago bus: “Diets don't work, get a lap band,” is the message from Dr. Frederick Tiesenga, a surgeon with an Elmwood Park, Ill.-based weight-loss surgical center, New Hope.
Tiesenga says the ad attempts to draw in morbidly obese people, who face a 5% success rate for losing weight on a diet. “That's the same as the number of people who think Elvis is still alive,” he said.
These types of messages could spread misleading health information as various federal agencies struggle with monitoring a deluge of ads involving different projects.
Complaints about prescription drug advertisements are regulated by the FDA while the Federal Trade Commission has oversight of ads involving over-the-counter medications. Adding to the confusion, labeling, promotion and advertising requirements for medical devices are handled by the Division of Premarket and Labeling Compliance at the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health.
In a 2014 report in the American Journal of Bioethics that evaluated the ethics of advertising healthcare services, co-author Dr. Yael Schenker and colleagues said consistent oversight and standards are needed, or ads for general healthcare services will continue to play on emotional, fear-evoking appeals.
“We have to accept that advertisements are intended to be persuasive and are never going to present a complete or exhaustive list of risks or benefits,” Schenker said.
But for healthcare, “there needs to be a unique set of criteria and oversight that is different from cars or cereal and other run-of-the-mill consumer products,” he said. The report suggested the FDA set risk-disclosure guidelines for a “fair balance” of information about benefits and harms in healthcare ads.
For Michael Carome, Health Research Group director at the watchdog organization Public Citizen, the differences in advertising reflect a broader concern about pre-market FDA approvals, which are also different for drugs and devices. “The standards are much lower for devices than for drugs,” he said. “That dichotomy extends to advertising provisions,” he said.
