Headache Remedy

As television viewers are only too well aware, the list of headaches that call for Excedrin is all but infinite. Last week the manufacturers of Excedrin and other popular painkillers discovered that their own products may prove inadequate to cope with the pain that the Federal Trade Commission is about to cause them. The FTC announced that it will issue complaints against three major analgesic producers for "misleading and unfair" advertising. It is also prescribing a remedy that would hurt not only the companies' images but their pocketbooks as well.

The FTC complaints name three firms, American Home Products (Anacin and Arthritis Pain Formula), Bristol-Myers (Excedrin, Excedrin P.M., Bufferin) and Sterling Drug (Bayer aspirin, Cope, Vanquish, Midol). On the basis of research by the Food and Drug Administration, the FTC says that there is no reasonable basis for claims that any of the analgesics is better than any other, or that they relieve nervous tension. There is, says the agency, "a substantial question as to the validity, sig- nificance or interpretation of tests and studies related to such claims."

The FTC complaint is not unexpected. The Food and Drug Administration has been looking into drug efficacy since 1962 and has found that a number of preparations do not meet their manufacturers' claims. But the commission's remedy is dramatic. Its proposed order would prohibit any further misrepresentation and require disclosure in advertising of the presence of aspirin or caffeine, which could worsen the condition of some patients. Penance for past sins would be even stiffer. In a drastic application of the "truth-in-advertising" doctrine, the FTC wants drug companies to devote 25% of their advertising expenditures during the next two years to ads correcting the claims now under challenge. At the manufacturers' present advertising budgets, that would mean about $40 million over two years for the "corrections."

The FTC hopes that the affected firms will accede to its requests without an argument. But such an agreement seems unlikely. Said Frank Mayers, president of Bristol-Myers Products: "We remain confident of the quality and effectiveness of our products and of the truthfulness of their advertising." The FTC will probably have to issue formal complaints and hold hearings, the results of which could be appealed up to the Supreme Court. Such procedures are usually lengthy; it took the FTC 16 years to get the word "liver" out of Carter's Little Liver Pills.

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