Wonder if this will appear on ratbags?

http://www.newstarget.com/z022542.html

NewsTarget.com printable article
Originally published January 24 2008
Consumers Advocate Group Urges Ban on Marketing to Children
by Lynn Berry

(NewsTarget) The Consumers International Congress (CI) was held in Sydney at
the end of October with the theme 'holding corporations to account'. Two
areas of the Congress that attracted media attention were 'Obesity and Food
Marketing', and 'The Ethics of the Drug Promotion'.

The Congress maintains that consumers want corporations to be accountable
and responsible in the marketing of drugs to consumers and medical
practitioners, and in the marketing of food products to children.

In fact according to Boyd Swinburn, Director of WHO Collaborating Centre for
Obesity Prevention, we should not be marketing to children. Our focus should
be on supporting government policy that helps to improve public health. In
addition, following previous initiatives, Swinburn says we should provide
support to schools in reducing junk foods and soft drinks, and look at
appropriate portion sizes. These initiatives will help address obesity.

Marimuthu Nadason, president, Federation of the Malaysian Consumer
Associations says Consumer International (CI) wants to end the marketing of
unhealthy food to children. Because, in general, this marketing encourages
unhealthy diets and physical inactivity. Much food marketing is linked to
free toys, interactive websites, celebrity or cartoon endorsements, and
sponsoring school activities.

The aim would be to focus on unhealthy food - foods high in fat, salt and
sugar. And to have independent nutritionists determine what products are
healthy.

An example of misleading corporate advertising practice is Kelloggs in
Mexico who was forced to remove a cereal ad that claimed children could
develop skills if they ate the cereal which is high in sugar.

The speakers on the topic of The Ethics of Drug Promotion included Ray
Moynihan. Moynihan, an academic and the author of Selling Sickness, claims
that pharmaceutical companies take risk factors to "create diseases" and
"healthy people are turned into patients". Examples of this include social
anxiety disorder and female sexual dysfunction.

He is highly critical of the way pharmaceutical companies influence doctors
and mentions Strivor, a drug for motivational deficiency disorder. One issue
is whether this disorder is real or not. The other is when the company
producing Strivor attempts to influence doctors' prescribing habits through
perks such as champagne breakfasts.

Moynihan calls for new rules to stop this behaviour and said that the
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) have introduced rules
that require pharmaceutical companies to declare all gifts to doctors, such
as overseas trips and expensive meals. A start to reigning in the influence
of the drug companies.

Other countries don't have any of these rules, developing countries in
particular . CI released a report documenting gifts ranging from dinners,
trips, and cars that are given to doctors. An example, is a Malaysian doctor
receiving over 70 gifts in a month.

This practic, according to the head of the International Federation of
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, Dr. Harvey Bale, breaches the federation's own
code of ethics.

Self-regulation by multinationals has been breached as well. Drug
advertising by Glaxo-SmithKline, Wyeth, Novartis and Pfizer in developing
countries would be cited as misleading in Europe. The report states that
nearly half the medicines prescribed, dispensed or sold in developing
countries are done so inappropriately.

The ethics of drug promotion are in question when incentives are given to
prescribe drugs. These incentives are lavish gifts. According to the
professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry at Aga Khan
University, if a doctor writes 200 prescriptions of a company's high priced
drug, he will get the down payment of a new car.

It has become a normal practice to pamper doctors in countries with weak
regulation with the aim to get multi-million dollar profits. The director
general of CI, Richard Lloyd called for a ban on all gifts to doctors.

Other issues include the marketing of drugs banned in other countries to
developing countries, and the regulation of drugs when they are banned. For
example, Vioxx produced by Merck for arthritis was selling in India a year
after it was banned.

Also of concern are drug advertisements failing to mention the side effects
or the restrictions on the use of the drug.

Other presenters on the topic of the marketing tactics of pharmaceutical
companies included Ronit Ridberg, director of 'Big Bucks Big Pharma'; and
Justine Cooper, creator of an exhibit about an imaginary drug to treat an
imaginary disorder - see(www.havidol.com).

About the author
Lynn Berry loves good food and cooking and is passionate about nutrition and
natural health care. She has a website promoting healthy eating at
www.low-calorie-vegetarian-recipe.com.