Pharmacy Daily | Pfizer fined over Lipitor ads

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’.

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