Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19188

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

Pfizer fined over Lipitor ads
Pharmacy Daily 2011 Jan 24
pharmacydaily.com.au

Full text:

THE Medicines Australia code of conduct complaints committee has ordered
Pfizer to pay a $20,000 fine over a series of ads which appeared in
online GP publication Sixminutes last year.

The case is the result of a complaint by Melbourne academic Ken Harvey,
who claimed that the advertisements are false and misleading.

The ads in question show a person dressed in barrister’s robes with the
tag line “It’s all about the evidence” and claim to depict ‘Barry
Andrews. Judge since 1999’.

Small print on the ads note that Barry Andrews is not in fact a real
judge nor a Lipitor patient, with Harvey saying this makes the ads false
and misleading.

Pfizer said it hadn’t intended to mislead with the ads, but rather aimed
to highlight that Lipitor has a wealth of evidence that supports its
efficacy, “and to encourage doctors to make evidence-based prescription
decisions”.

The Complaints Committee determined that the ads formed a ‘minor breach’
of the MA Code because it had “no safety implications for patients and
would have no major effect on how the medical profession would prescribe
the product”.

The committee also ordered that Pfizer cease using the advertisements
that included the statement: ‘Barry Andrews. Judge since 1999. On
Lipitor since 2005’.