The PhRMA misadventures reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to cover for nigh on six months, this little Glaxo ad (click for big!):

Let’s unpack this, starting from the bottom:

• The drugs were junk. Not much to say here. (The FDA’s test results and the accompanying press release are online.)
• The credit card was processed in St. Kitts. Suspicious, but doesn’t really tell us much. After all, VeriSign, the $6B company that controls .com, hawks this very service (see FAQ: I am a U.S. merchant interested in processing offshore in Bermuda, can I do this? Hint: Yes.)
• The Web server is in China. Easily the weakest argument of the bunch. My site is hosted in California; the domain lives at a Canadian registrar. Can you spot some technical difference between this North American-based offering and, say, The Modest Mr. Pech‘s, which is hosted in Hong Kong on an IP that reverse-resolves to a Bulgarian-registered hostname? Thought not. That’s the whole point. The Internet is the Internet.
• It’s not clear where they’re “based.” Fair enough on the evasiveness, but what does “based” really mean these days? GSK itself says they’re “[h]eadquartered in the UK and with operations based in the US.” So I guess their HQ isn’t a base.
• The postmark and return address didn’t match. Ever receive an Amazon package that wasn’t shipped from Washington? Spooky!

Now hold on, John, you might be saying. Yes, each of these things could have a legitimate explanation, but how likely is it that all of them would come together? Aren’t you cherry-picking comparisons?

Certainly! But at least I admit it. GSK, on the other hand, buries the single most important fact of this entire ad: all of these events were set in motion [a]fter receiving a spam e-mail….

If they’d run an ad with a headline such as: “With Spam, What You Don’t Know Might Kill You” I wouldn’t even bat an eye. That would be alarmist yet honest. In fact, they could even use one of their own lines: “Where did all these medicines really come from? And what exactly is in them?”

But no. While there are real problems with ordering drugs online from any source (including domestic), the drug companies prefer to shoehorn the message into their chosen narrative: we can’t trust Canada.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2005 at 1:32 am and is filed under Miscellany.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.