FTC, Protect Our Consumption!

Just last week, four interest groups filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against online sites engaging in medical advertising services and offering medical information deemed deceptive. The Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog, the U.S Public Interest Research Group, and the World Privacy Forum, all claim that these sites are promoting the usage of specific drug brands and attempting to persuade members of the public to undergo certain health treatments. One site these claims target is WebMD, who according to the complaint, “[fails] to adequately disclose the relationship and role of advertisers and sponsors”. In addition to WebMD, other sites named in the complaint include AOL, Everyday Health, Google, and Health Central.

According to the complaint, not only are sites not disclosing any bias they may have in their drug and medical treatment marketing, but by providing free online newsletters and discounts for prescription drugs as well as tracking the web activities of users, these sites are collecting information about individuals and allowing health marketers to better determine how to market their goods to the individual. Some sites, the complaint filed said, are not transparent enough about how they track people through users’ online heath searches and other means.

The FTC, whose slogan “Protecting America’s Consumers” captures the agency’s responsibility in a nutshell, is in charge of regulating most of the marketing in the United States. In a statement the FTC submitted to Congress in May of this year, the FTC explains its primary authority over the advertising of food and drugs. In the Federal Commission Act which was recently amended in 2006, the commission is granted the power to investigate any persons or corporations engaged in businesses that affect commerce of food, drugs, devices, services, or cosmetics.

In light of this, the U.S Public Interest Research Group and the other three interest groups are using the FTC as an access point to change federal rules regarding how online marketing of drugs is regulated, specifically asking for the FTC , which already has rules against any person, partnership, or corporation which engages in “deceptive or unfair” practices, to investigate the data collection practices of these sites and to create more stringent rules that force sites to be explicit about their patient-profiling as well as drug and treatment sponsorships. If the FTC does not correct the areas the interest groups filed their complaint about, we may see this issue travel to the federal courts in an example of an agency-forcing action where an agency is sued, in this case by interest groups, in order to enforce certain rules.