In July, I wrote an article on Ethical Pharmacy Practice and Homeopathic No-Jet-Lag. In it, I described the importance of the role pharmacies play in the healthcare system, and their ethical obligation not to mislead consumers or promote ineffective healthcare products. In particular, I described an advertisement I saw in an Auckland pharmacy for a homeopathic product called “No-Jet-Lag”, and the complaint I submitted to the Advertising Standards Authority about it via the Society for Science Based Healthcare. There’s also a write up of this decision and the 2 others released at the same time on the Society’s website: Pharmacy to Remove Homeopathic Product Following Complaint

On the 9th of October, the ASA released their decision to the public. They ruled to uphold my complaint, which means the advertisement has to be removed. More importantly, in response to my complaint the pharmacy made a promise to remove the product from sale if the complaint was upheld. Here’s what they said:

We believe that the manufacturer, Miers Laboratories ought to respond to the substantive complaint that it’s [sic] representations fail to comply with the Therapeutic Products Advertsing [sic] Code. We believe that the product is sold in many pharmacies in New Zealand and it is somewhat arbitrary that our pharmacy is the subject of the complaint. We are interested in the outcome of the complaint and can indicate that if the Authority upholds the complaint we will remove the product from sale. In the meantime, the product has been removed from the counter and placed on a less prominent position.

I agree with their first two points. While I think pharmacies shouldn’t promote or sell healthcare products without a sound understanding of the evidence behind them and the claims made about them, I also think it’s reasonable to expect the manufacturer (who also produced the advertising in this case) to substantiate the claims. Moving the display to a less prominent position in the meantime seems like a reasonable compromise as well, although of course I’d prefer it if the product were never stocked in the first place.

I also agree with them that their inclusion in this complaint is somewhat arbitrary. For that reason I am not going to specify in this article which pharmacy it was. If you really must know then you can read the full decision on the ASA’s website. As they said, many New Zealand pharmacies sell this product and I think this complaint applies to all of them.

I also think this pharmacy’s promise to remove the product from sale in the event that this complaint is upheld, as it now has been, is the appropriate response. I think that every single New Zealand pharmacy that stocks No-Jet-Lag should follow suit. There are a lot of them. The website for this product even claims on its New Zealand Retail Outlets page that “Most chemists nationwide” stock it.

As I mentioned in my original post on this topic, and in my complaint, New Zealand pharmacists are bound by the Pharmacy Council’s Safe Effective Pharmacy Practice Code of Ethics 2011. Perhaps the most important part of this industry code of ethics, at least in my mind, is section 6.9:

YOU MUST: Only purchase, supply or promote any medicine, complementary therapy, herbal remedy or other healthcare product where there is no reason to doubt its quality or safety and when there is credible evidence of efficacy.

This is a very fine standard to adhere to, and I would hope that all businesses to which it could possibly apply would adhere to it as well, although realistically I know that’s not the case.

In response to the complaint, Miers Laboratories submitted a few studies to the ASA. They were pretty laughable though when you look at the sample size:

In all our research we base our work on previous studies, the first study for jet lag used 5 people, then it was 10 and at the time the accepted worldwide minimum was 12 for clinical trialOur [sic] bigger study used 19 people.

So basically “most of our studies didn’t even meet the very low minimum accepted size, and even the largest one was tiny”. Very impressive, Miers Laboratories.

The 19 person study they mention is also promoted on their website, and I pre-emptively discussed it in my complaint. It seems the Advertising Standards Complaints Board essentially agreed with my criticisms:

The majority of the Complaints Board said the statement “It really works” was an absolute therapeutic claim and, as such, required a high level of support. However, it noted the trial population in the pilot study was small, the methodology was not robust and the results had not been published or peer reviewed. The Complaints Board also noted the study was an in-house trial conducted by the Advertiser rather than independent research. Given the weaknesses in the study, the majority of the Complaints Board said the Advertiser had not satisfactorily substantiated the claim the product “really works” and, as such, the Complaints Board said the advertisement had the potential to mislead consumers. Consequently, the Complaints Board said the advertisement did not observe a high standard of social responsibility required of advertisements of this type. Therefore, the majority of the Complaints Board ruled the advertisement was in breach of Principles 2 and 3 of the Therapeutic Products Advertising Code.

For context, Principle 2 of the Therapeutic Products Advertising Code states that:

Advertisements must be truthful, balanced and not misleading. Claims must be valid and have been substantiated.

And Principle 3 states that:

Advertisements must observe a high standard of social responsibility.

This is basically exactly the result I was hoping for, which is great. However, I was a little concerned by one part of the decision:

A minority of the Complaints Board disagreed [that the advertisement was in breach of Principles 2 and 3 of the Therapeutic Products Advertising Code]. It acknowledged the study sent by the Advertiser to support its claims. While it noted the issues with the study, the minority of the Complaints Board was of the view the product was not harmful and said the consequences of the product not working were not significant or serious for the consumer.

I’d expect anyone who has ever paid money for a pill to prevent jet lag would disagree with this, although it is obviously a lot more serious than something like a cancer treatment that doesn’t work. More importantly, although I do agree that it’s important to consider the severity of what happens if the product doesn’t work, I hope that the ASA will not give a free pass to misleading therapeutic advertising simply because it’s for a condition that they deem insignificant.

Now that this complaint has been upheld, the pharmacy in question has promised to remove No-Jet-Lag from sale. I hope this is the start of a spring clean for all New Zealand pharmacies that stock this product. They should follow this responsible example and take the opportunity to examine other products they have for sale – especially homeopathic products – to ensure that they are abiding by their ethical duty not to promote or supply healthcare products for which there is no credible evidence of efficacy.

You can help. Next time you see a homeopathic product in a pharmacy, ask them what the evidence for it is. If you see this particular product, ask them if they’re aware that the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint against it on the basis that the evidence for it just isn’t good enough.

EDIT 2014/10/12

It’s great to see that several media outlets have picked up this story: