Careful with those pharma ads

Medical advertising in China has long been one of the world's more bizarre corners of the wild claim. Medicines which claim to cure everything from acne to athlete's foot and AIDS are still regularly promoted in many media.

It was with some interest then that we noticed this Xinhua piece about new restrictions on medical advertising. It notes that "new regulations, which will take effect on January 1, 2007, will eliminate exaggeration of the effects of certain medical treatments by banning the mention of any disease names".

We assume that this will be welcomed by the mainstream international medical media. Their relationships with the major international pharma companies - the fount of all profitability in the medical media business - should allow them to stake out the high ground of medi media more effectively in China with this sort of government backing.