Advertising: Suffering from Seizure

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Acting under orders from the Federal Drug Administration, a U.S. marshal last week visited a wholesale drug dealer in Queens, N.Y., asked if there was any Peritrate on the premises. When told that there was, the marshal said: "I declare it seized." Whereupon he took into custody 68 bottles of the drug, each containing 100 capsules and worth $7.50 wholesale.

The seizure symbolized FDA determination to start acting under powers granted it by Congress in 1962 to prevent the sale of drugs for which overblown advertising claims have been made. In last week's test case, the victim was the Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Co., maker of some of the best-known products on the market (Listerine, Bromo-Seltzer, Dentyne, Smith Bros. cough drops).

Peritrate itself is a specific for angina pectoris. While the FDA admits that the drug relieves the savage pain of the heart disease, it denies that Peritrate effects any actual cure. Yet, in a recent advertising campaign, Warner-Lambert asks the question, "Is Peritrate life-sustaining?" and seems to answer it affirmatively by presenting charts based on a study by Dr. Alexander Oscharoff, head of the adult cardiac clinic at Queens Hospital Center. The charts indicate that heart patients treated with Peritrate stand a 22% better chance of being alive two years after a heart attack than those who were given a placebo.

Dr. Oscharoff himself says: "At no time did I claim that Peritrate is the lifesaving, dramatic drug that the advertising makes it." He is looking for more conclusive results, continuing studies with larger groups of patients. "If the FDA succeeds in eliminating this kind of inflated advertising, I will be very happy indeed," he says. "It never was to my taste."

Warner-Lambert remains undaunted. According to its president, Alfred E. Driscoll, Republican Governor of New Jersey from 1947 to 1954, the company "firmly believes that the safety and utility of the product as demonstrated over long years of usage is beyond question." In reply to the FDA charges, Driscoll declares: "The FDA says Warner-Lambert made a new claim, and Warner-Lambert says no."