        |
Advertising watchdog
whimpers by HUW CHRISTIE Note: The information on this website is presented for
educational purposes and This document was provided by "In any battle, first conquer the eye"
The Independent Television Commission (ITC) in Britain has been responding to numerous complaints about highly visual advertisements aired on Channels 3 and 4 for pharmaceutical multinational Glaxo-Wellcome, which seek to persuade viewers the company is the market-leader in HIV/AIDS research. Explaining, "We do not consider the manner in which the information is presented to be likely to mislead viewers", the ITC is now publicly displaying its inadequacy to monitor the honesty and ethics of advertising on TV in an environment where technology and drugs are the new Tupperware. The advert in dispute asks, "Why have thousands of our scientists, along with the universities and hospitals, spent twelve years and over 500 million pounds researching into something which measure one 10,000th of a millimetre?" The visuals, according to Glaxo-Wellcome’s transcript, "Open on a moving microscope slide of an Aids virus." The picture shows how "It continually mutates", while the soothing voice-over asserts: "Because this is the HIV virus that leads to Aids. Which has killed more people than died in the Allied forces in the whole of the First World War". The "Camera starts to move in – one element of the virus looks like a poppy", until the "Visuals clear to white" and viewers are asked to believe "Man has no greater enemy than disease. Disease has no greater enemy than Glaxo-Wellcome." It’s a mad world. Challenged about what she terms "The physical representation of the HIV virus" (a frequent linguistic redundancy akin to speaking of the UK Kingdom), Louise McMurchie, the Advertising Standards Officer of the ITC, said, "The advertiser has explained that a highly complicated technique, Electron Microscope Imaging of HIV, was used to obtain images of stained sections of HIV which had been grown in cultured JM cells." Although she declined to address the impossibility of an electron microscope providing moving images such as were in the advert, evidence was presented in at least two complaints that HIV has never been isolated and so cannot be stained, sectioned or grown. Is it possible that McMurchie has overlooked a highly complicated technique, Data Review and Analysis, or "homework"? If the analogy is that AIDS patients are dying like cannon-fodder, asking Glaxo-Wellcome if they know what they’re doing is like asking arms manufacturers how far off peace is. Of course, Glaxo-Wellcome are clear what they’re doing – but it’s only distantly related to solving AIDS. In his popular examination of the political economy of the mass media, Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky discusses the relationship between propaganda and media: "The essential ingredients of our propaganda model...fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) ‘flak’ as a means of disciplining the media...". Many Britons will recognize the name Saatchi, the agency who produced the Glaxo-Wellcome advert, and might not expect truth to get in the way of their account margins. More disturbing is the complacency and subservience of apparently independent media professionals, among whom the ITC should certainly be counted – it is a body that seeks to define where standards of truth and reality should lie. Chomsky argues, "The elite domination of the media and marginalisation of dissidents that results from the operation of these filters occurs so naturally that media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news ‘objectively’...". The same sadly can be said for the reporting of the authenticity of advertising.
Says McMurchie, "Under the circumstances, we are satisfied that the advertiser has been able to substantiate the statements to which you object". The circumstances? "...it would appear that the majority of scientific and medical opinion believes that the HIV virus is causally linked to AIDS." With classic myopia, the ITC has absorbed the assurances of Glaxo-Wellcome’s PR, derived in turn from the likes of Dr Graham Darby, International Therapeutic Director, Viral Diseases Research, Glaxo-Wellcome Research & Development. It is a closed loop, in which the ITC has become dangerously entrapped: "Reliance of the media on information provided by...business and "experts" funded and approved by...these agents of power"? Can there be any illusion that broadcast advertising in Britain enjoys independent evaluation? That viewers can trust what they see? According to McMurchie, "The television companies are responsible for ensuring that the advertising they carry complies with our codes and we expect them to make responsible judgments about how viewers are likely to interpret or react to advertising. The ITC requires the television companies to check any claims made in an advertisement before accepting it for transmission." Anybody who thoroughly checked whether (i) "HIV" causes AIDS or (ii) "HIV" is known to exist, would arrive at negative conclusions. But how realistic is it to expect media workers at commercial TV companies to achieve this? Surely what is necessary is for the ITC to acknowledge that there is at least grave uncertainty in the scientific community about a relationship between a human immunodeficiency virus and AIDS, and put a hold on the gross profiteering of huge drug companies who may be causing untold damage. In the darkest of ironies, while claiming "Aids...has killed more people than died in the Allied forces in the whole of the first World War", Glaxo-Wellcome continue to market AZT (Retrovir) worldwide at substantial profit, inducing immune suppression and death in naive consumers. John Lauritsen states in his important book Poison by Prescription: The AZT Story, "The toxicities of AZT are firmly established. The drug is cytotoxic (i.e. it kills healthy cells); it destroys bone marrow; it causes severe anaemia, headaches, nausea, and muscular atrophy; it damages the kidneys, liver, and nerves; and it inhibits DNA synthesis. The consequences of AZT toxicity should not be taken lightly. When DNA synthesis is blocked, new cells are not formed, cells do not develop – the life process in effect comes to a halt. Joseph Sonnabend, a prominent New York city AIDS researcher and physician, expressed it succinctly: ‘AZT is incompatible with life.’" In August this year, Glaxo-Wellcome was "pleased to announce that the European Medicines Evaluation Agency (EMEA) has granted a licence for 3TC, now known as Epivir, to be used in combination with other antiretroviral agents for the treatment of HIV..." A nucleoside analogue in the same class as AZT, it’s safety and efficacy trial was stopped early and it is now available. Yet it seems to be the belief of the ITC that details, even when they spell death, are not the concern of the viewing public. If a process is "complicated’, it is to be unquestioned. We live in a climate of witless reassurance. Writes Chomsky, "Advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programmes with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the ‘buying mood’. They seek programmes that will lightly entertain and thus fit in with the spirit of the primary purpose of programme purchases – the dissemination of a selling message...companies will usually not want to sponsor close examination of sensitive and divisive issues."
With a gruesome optimism the ITC’s McMurchie believes Glaxo-Wellcome have taken the high moral ground in their infomercial campaign: "We take the view that the advertising is intended to raise awareness of the research being undertaken into...HIV by informing viewers of the numbers of people who either have been or will be affected by virus." When will the ITC mature into its genuine responsibilities in a world where spurious statistics of phantom infection are the justification for toxic sales campaigns? Does the Independent Television Commission have a glimmer of an idea what independence will have to mean? The ITC is at: |