Six companies were charged with unfair advertising and deceiving customers, and another five agreed to withdraw the questionable products from sale on their own.
Enterprises that came to the attention of the federal service sold a variety of “natural” drugs through online stores: medicinal teas, extracts of apricot seeds, plant roots, mushrooms, etc., supposedly intended for the treatment of cancer. The websites of the companies contained statements about the high effectiveness of products, recommendations for the treatment and prevention of various forms of cancer, as well as stories of patients’ recovery told in the first person (the authors of the latter were, as a rule, the owners of the websites).
The effectiveness of such funds has not been confirmed by any scientific research, in addition, as emphasized in , some of their ingredients are toxic and can cause serious harm to the health of patients.
In lawsuits, the FTC is demanding the termination of misleading advertising campaigns, the withdrawal of questionable products from sale, as well as compensation for customers who have already purchased such “drugs”.
The firms that reached pre-trial agreements with the FTC agreed to pay compensation to the victims in the total amount from 9 to 250 thousand dollars.
A few weeks earlier, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched a campaign against dealers in questionable drugs: more than 20 companies received warning letters recommending to stop selling drugs with unconfirmed medicinal properties.
Since 2007, the FTC and FDA have been working with Canadian regulatory authorities to regularly monitor websites that sell medical and paramedical products. From now on, information about new pseudo-drugs for cancer found on the Internet will be published on a specially created website called