HEALTH ADS OFTEN MISLEAD BUYERS

152 infractions in 11 months

Laws meant to protect Canadians from misleading promotions of health products are violated routinely, with natural- health companies, cosmetic-surgery clinics and even a public hospital among numerous offenders, newly divulged federal records indicate.

Health Canada has lifted the lid on its enforcement actions in the area for the first time, posting a list of 152 advertising infractions it looked into over an 11-month period.

The document suggests companies regularly breach the rules, though none in the past year has actually been prosecuted.

“Health Canada takes immediate action in areas where an advertising poses a high risk to the health and safety of Canadians,” said Eric Morrissette, a spokesman for the department.

But the first approach is to get the perpetrator to voluntarily comply — without charges — “which Health Canada achieves in virtually all cases,” he said.

The list includes cases from October 2014 to this past September, providing the name of the company and product involved, and a terse description of the offence.

The most common breaches involved natural- health companies asserting that products ranging from harp-seal oil to olive- leaf powder and shark cartilage could treat serious ailments.

Even the Shopping Channel was taken to task for making unauthorized claims in the advertising of products like Vitatree Cold/flu and immune formula.

The homeopathic product Influenzium was the subject of several investigations for promotion of unauthorized claims. The regulator has barred companies from suggesting that homeopathic remedies — massively diluted solutions with molecular amounts of active ingredient — can prevent infectious diseases.

But as recently as Wednesday, at least one Canadian company, Abaco Health of Kelowna, B.C., was still promoting Influenzium online as “your best choice as a flu preventive,” and “highly effective to prevent the flu.”

Several doctors and private clinics were chastised by Health Canada for flogging Botox injections, despite a ban on advertising any such prescription drug to consumers.

One of the most unusual cases involved a hospital, Ontario’s Southlake Regional Health Centre.

The Winter 2015 issue of Being Well, its fundraising magazine, featured a lengthy pitch f rom t he CEOs of Southlake and its charitable foundation for what they called the world’s first pacemaker without leads. Southlake was among a “select few” hospitals to offer the Nanostim implant, said the article, quoting a surgeon there as being “truly excited.”

But it violated advertising laws because it promoted a product that had yet to be approved, said Health Canada. The hospital later issued a correction and the case was closed.

Medical devices face a much less stringent approval process than do prescription drugs, and several cardiac devices in the past have been found to have potentially lethal defects.

Kathryn Perrier, a Southlake spokeswoman, noted that the offending material was in editorial copy, not a traditional ad, but said the hospital was happy to comply.

Another two cases highl i ghted the ongoing war between generic and brandname drug manufacturers.

Health Canada ordered changes to generic ads that suggested the low- priced products were as similar to brand- name medicines as two identical green apples.

“The image … could give the impression that generic drugs and innovative (brand-name) medicines are the same, when in fact, they are not,” said Morrissette.

Though generic drugs do have to contain the same medicine, they can include different non- medicinal ingredients.

Earlier, the department clamped down on Astellas, a brand- name manufacturer, over a webinar for drug- plan managers that suggested generic versions of transplant drugs may not guarantee “therapeutic equivalence” and warned of possible poor outcomes.

Health Canada ordered the company to stop making such comments, saying they are “inaccurate and misleading.”

Posting the list is a positive move by the government, but the information is “quite sketchy,” said Barbara Mintzes, a Canadian expert on health- product advertising now at Australia’s University of Sydney.

By contrast, the U. S. Food and Drug Administration posts the letter it sent to the offending company, the original ad and an explanation of why it violated the law, she said.