Pharma company should substantiate claims

MANY MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS have already pointed out that the so-called pharmaceutical liquor of Hongmao Pharmaceutical, which it boasts can help promote health, does not help at all. In other words, it has broken the Advertisement Law, which prohibits exaggerated and false claims. Thepaper.cn comments:

Besides the Advertisement Law, there are special regulations on medical advertisements, yet none of these prevented Hongmao Pharmaceutical’s advertisements from being broadcast. It was reported that the liquor had been notified by the food and drug administrations in 25 provinces and autonomous regions as violating the Advertisement Law. It has been banned from sale many times.

Local supervision departments cannot shrug off their responsibilities. Despite some saying Hongmao Pharmaceutical’s advertisements made false claims, the company has always been able to get approval from the local food and drug administrations for its advertisements. And it is always possible for the false claims to be advertised on TV. It also gained the title of being a “Time-honored Brand”, which it put on top of its website.

Hongmao Pharmaceutical has survived being labeled as a violator of the law 2,630 times. It seems that the law does not work with this violator. It is obvious that the law needs to be amended so that illegal advertisement producers receive penalties harsh enough to prevent them from committing illicit deeds again. Also the local food and drug administrations and those media which publish or broadcast the false advertisements should be punished.

Several media outlets have already pointed out several fatal problems with Li’s story. For instance, he claims he signed a pre-admission contract with Massachusetts University of Technology, which does not exist, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which carries a similar name, said it does do not sign such contracts.

He posted photos of some emails about his pre-admission offer online, but these emails were sent from one of his own email accounts to other email accounts he owned.

He said he won a gold in an international ACPC computer competition, yet no one could find the organizer of the competition.

It seems that Li’s story is made up and someone helped promote it.

Li is only a 14-year-old middle school student; if he fabricated the story himself, it would not have been so harmful. It is the publicity efforts of the local education bureau that helped spread the false story and fooled so many people.

The local education bureau has said it publicized Li’s story to promote Laiyang’s image. The problem is, the image of the city will never be promoted with false stories. Such claims will eventually be found to be false. When that happens, the fake stories will only hurt the local government’s image.

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