For the past few months, a billboard campaign, promoting the Allergan Lap Band Surgery device for gastric restrictive-a way to lose weight-caused a controversy in Southern California on concerns that the risks are not adequately disclosed. The Los Angeles County Director of public health, in fact, he wrote the FDA to require an investigation, which requires some negative publicity (read the letter).
Billboards are actually sponsored by a company of marketing on behalf of physicians and clinics, which are, essentially, Allergan customers. The company naturally benefits from this kind of exposure, yet did not seem to go out of his way to disavow the campaign. A spokesman for Allergan told the Los Angeles Times, your ads may not be regulated, why aren’t ads Allergan, although it has been written a letter to the FDA to create some distance.
But a column so recently in the book punished Allergan to want it. ” both ways Will hawk to consumers … and his product is apparently happy to profit of their clients advertising campaigns featuring claims about the product that are devoid of context or qualifications. But when push comes to shove, he also wants to claim that the deliverables are under its responsibility. ” It is worth noting, too, that the billboards are situated not far from Allergan offices.
This is good timing for Allergan, given that the company wants the FDA to allow surgery to a larger pool of consumers overweight-around 2 million, in fact, according to public health Director Jonathan Fielding County. Allergan and its now even online campaign to convince Congress to improve access to surgical procedure, which is another way to look for greater reimbursement and guidelines that mention surgery as an option.
And so Allergan ceo David Pyott, who was doing the rounds yesterday to chat about a recent report of earnings is now scrambling to disassociate the company from the message, not-so-subtle billboards that “diets fail! The works of band around! ” Namely, he tells book the “that is not the wording that would like to use. We provide comfort and safety of patients at the top, so that they don’t support. “
He adds that Allergan is coming with voluntary guidelines for surgeons to remind them that any ads should include clear instructions on the risks of Lap Band. And hopes to prevent Pyott billboards from elswhere appearing in the United States, although how this is possible remains unclear, since Allergan insists that there is no formal connection to the marketing company that, in any way, argues new ads will contain information of risk. The document points out three people in his region recently deceased after the procedure that maintains the Pyott is safe and effective and has a mortality rate of patients 1 in 2000.
Nevertheless, Pyott could have been stronger publicly and done before. Even taking the company to his word that there is no link with the company’s marketing-or any clinic or doc who hired the firm-Allergan still had the responsibility to act. Failure to do so may seem to persist that Allergan endorsed a message that was incomplete and irresponsible. Pyott has not yet addressed the issue until the negative publicity ensued. He wants the federal approval for a product is safe and effective. He should provide effective leadership.
View the original article here
Incoming search terms:
- robin nelson allergan
- allergan clinics
- allergan announcements
- allergan co-marketing
- allergan rainforest
- congress and allergan
- nelson publishing negitive publicity
