Responding to increasing public complaints about shoddy and misleading medical advertisements, members to the ongoing CPPCC session suggested that major surgery is needed to regulate the medical sector and protect patient interests.

For years, misleading, exaggerated and sometimes fraudulent ads promoting medical products and services have turned many patients and their families into victims, losing money, time in treatment and sometimes lives.

Fu Minkui, a CPPCC member and director of Oral and Orthodontic Research Office with Peking University's School of Stomatology, likened such ads to a "cancer" in the advertising sector, one requiring immediate "excision surgery."

The "cancer" is growing at an appalling speed. Of the roughly 10,000-strong of illegal advertising on medical and healthcare products checked last year, 70 per cent were found to have been broadcast or printed with no official approval. And monitoring of TV commercials on medicines launched between January and September, 2004, showed that 62 per cent were illegal, while scrutiny of the print media produced an even higher number - 90 per cent.

Fu suggested that medical products and services be defined as "special commodities" which commercial advertising should refrain from benefiting from.

And the heavy marketing, bragging about the efficacy of certain medicines and treatments by a hospital, could constitute a violation of the rights of other hospitals and doctors, he suggested.

Many newspapers and journals targeting senior readers carry solely medical ads, pages after pages, and they never seem to blush on wording that is always too exaggerated to be true, Fu pointed out.

"Whenever there is some hard disease, these ads would pop up touting magic cures, which are blatant cheating," he added.

Chi Baorong, director of Jilin University's School of Medicine, slammed the irresponsibility of some advertisers accusing them of failing to take patient interests into consideration. "These medical quacks could jeopardize patients in life-and-death situations."

She Jing, vice minister of health and director of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, attributed the chaotic situation of medical advertising to the lack of efficient management.

Even though advertisements on medical products and services can only be carried after rounds of reviews by departments of health, drug administration, industry and commerce, as well as advertising companies and the media, problems such as conflicts of interest make coherent management and regulation impossible. She is of the opinion the community medical service system should be built up and strengthened, "so that patients can get advice from community doctors, instead of these medical ads."

But, Sheng Di, director of the Department of Internal Medicine with the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, pointed out that regulating advertising is more constructive than merely suspending such ads. Sheng remarked on the positive effects of such advertisements, but suggested restricting such advertising in professional medical publications.

"The advertising is of ill-repute mainly because the country's laws are not good enough to police the sector," said Sheng.

Answering members' concerns on the issue, Zheng Xiaoyu, director of the State Drug Administration, said regulations are underway to check illegal practices in the approving process of medical advertisements.

Meanwhile, an action plan to regulate the advertising of medical products has been placed top of the agenda by his administration. The action plan has been submitted to the State Council for approval.

(China Daily March 6, 2005)