E-drug: Canadian national newspaper runs orlistat ad / advertorial campaign
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Today's Globe & Mail, one of Canada's two national daily newspapers,
arrived with a body mass index calculator and helpful hints for how
to reduce your weight. This was unbranded advertising by Roche for
orlistat (Xenical) with a link to a Roche 'obesity' website. The
handy calculator stretches the limits of 'at risk' body mass index,
telling people that they 'may be at risk of weight-related health
problems' beyond a BMI of 25 - far beyond the indications for use of
orlistat in Canada.
Today's paper ran a prominent commentary piece entitled: "Why I
refuse to be fat."
How did this coincidence come about? It is not hard to guess. The
Globe & Mail has previously run ads for advertisers, saying a special
supplement on women's health or depression or whatever will appear on
such and such a date. Interested advertisers can then run linked ads.
This is the public, visible side of bought 'news'; the invisible side
is the censored news that does not run in a national newspaper
because advertisers may not like it.
I am interested to know of any examples of regulation of unbranded
'disease-oriented' advertising that implicitly recommends unapproved
indications for a drug by broadening the definition of disease.
Barbara Mintzes
Centre for Health Services and Policy Research
University of British Columbia
Barbara Mintzes <BJMintzes@cs.com>
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