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Products with phony H1N1 claims began popping up on the Internet less than 48 hours after Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, declared H1N1 a public-health emergency on April 26. That's not unusual. The FDA says every time a new health threat pops up, fly-by-night companies take advantage of public fears by offering products that are too good to be true. "We've had similar situations with SARS and with avian flu," says Gary Coody, the national health-fraud coordinator for the FDA...
...difference this time is that the FDA is taking the offensive, ferreting out deceitful product claims and publicizing them. FDA staff members began performing daily Internet searches, looking for products that claimed to offer special protection against the new virus. Since all the suspicious products were classified as supplements or, in the case of some, as food, any claims by their makers that these products protect consumers against swine flu - in other words, to have a druglike effect - were automatically illegal. (See the top 5 swine...
After identifying the products, the FDA sent out warning letters to manufacturers, ordering them to stop making unlawful claims related to H1N1 or else withdraw the products immediately. Those companies that failed to comply could be hit with criminal prosecution. "We wanted to make the public aware of what it might be purchasing, and take care of themselves," says Saben...
...FDA's aggressive tack has been working. Most of the targeted companies removed their fraudulent claims as quickly as they put them up. Through June 22, the FDA issued 54 warning letters involving more than 100 products, achieving compliance with nearly three-quarters of them. "The bottom line is that we want to make sure that these products don't proliferate in the marketplace and harm consumers," says Saben...
Anyone who really believes in claims as ludicrous as these, some might say, deserve to be fooled. But the FDA points out that in the case of a public-health emergency like H1N1, we all have an interest in making sure that quack products are exposed, lest they allow the virus to spread more easily. "That's why the FDA has put out an aggressive strategy," says Saben. "These products pose a significant threat to public health." The products might be fake - but the H1N1 virus is very real...