
Australia pulls some Nurofen products over misleading claims - DanBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35090087
======
DanBC
The manufacturer took their standard product - ibuprofen - and repackaged it
for different ailments under their brand name. So they had a Nurofen Back
Pain, Nurofen Period Pain, Nurofen Migraine Pain and Nurofen Tension Headache.
They then sold these for much more than their normal nurofen product.

The Australian court ruled that this market segmentation was not legal.

~~~
masklinn
However care should be taken in expanding this to other products: in the
discussion on /r/australia a commenter noted that the active ingredient(s) may
not be the only issue at hand and provided the example of panadol's "osteo"
whose active ingredient is standard paracetamol _but_ which is packaged as a
partially sustained release tablet (2/3 of the paracetamol is delivered over
something like 8 hours)

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J-dawg
This is especially interesting when you consider that the basic product
(Nurofen) is already a [massive scam / triumph of branding] (delete according
to personal opinion).

There's a very strange bug in human programming that we still fall for this
stuff so easily.

Branding used to be (and still is) very important in an unregulated market. If
there's a high chance that rival products are ineffective (or poisonous) then
you have a damned good incentive to stick to your trusted brand.

In a regulated market where a £0.30 pack of generic ibuprofen is literally the
_same thing_ as a £2.00 pack of Nurofen, there should be no reason for Nurofen
to even exist. In a rational world it wouldn't exist.

I guess the advertising & branding industry really hasn't existed for all that
long in terms of human civilisation. Maybe we will gradually wise up to this
sort of thing?

~~~
feintruled
Quite. I can even feel the branding working on me even though I know it is
rubbish. The nice shiny foil pack versus the plain basic package. The thought
that perhaps the big company will have better quality control. I suppose
complicating the matter is the placebo effect, especially as it is the area of
pain relief which is the poster child for the efficacy of placebo.

~~~
gjm11
The big company might well have better quality control (though, depending on
the regulatory environment, you may have very good grounds to believe that
everyone's quality control is good enough) -- but it seems unlikely that _the
same_ big company has better quality control for one product than for another
identical product in different packaging.

But not impossible. You could imagine that they do some kind of tests on their
pills, and put the "better" batches in the fancier packaging with the higher
prices. I doubt it, though. (Though I bet such things do happen in other less
tightly regulated markets.)

~~~
TeMPOraL
One area where it happens is electrical components; for instance, if you buy a
bunch of 10kΩ ±5% reistors and measure their actual resistance, you should
find a nice distribution with a big hole around exactly 10kΩ; those resistors
were taken from the batch and sold as ±1% (or better) tolerance. But it
shouldn't happen with drugs, I doubt there are "grades" of acceptable quality.

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masklinn
The HN title is incorrect because it elides the "product" part of the
original. Australia didn't pull nurofen itself, they pulled nurofen-branded
products which made unsustained claims ("Back Pain", "Period Pain", "Migraine
Pain" and "Tension Headache" which were bog-standard nurofen formulation with
different branding and significant markup)

~~~
joosters
'Nurofen' is a brand. 'Ibuprofen' is the commonly used name here for the
active ingredient. Bog-standard Nurofen is still a marked-up, branded product
containing a generic drug.

~~~
masklinn
> 'Nurofen' is a brand.

Nurofen is both a brand and a specific product, the old title made it look
like the specific product itself or even the whole brand had been pulled,
neither of which is correct.

> Bog-standard Nurofen is still a marked-up, branded product containing a
> generic drug.

True as that might be, it doesn't make misleading claims and hasn't been
pulled, only 4 specific sub-products of the brand have been.

------
pistoriusp
I wonder if people would be interested in a greed index, whereby companies are
rated in terms of illegal/ greedy activity and scored.

An app can be used to scan barcodes of products to lookup their greediness.

I would like to think that consumers are reaching a point where they're
starting to care about buying products from ethical companies.

Money talks.

~~~
J-dawg
I like this idea. It seems to me that we are seeing more and more egregious
examples of companies pushing their luck with how far they can exploit their
customers' loyalty.

The difficulty would be in defining an objective "greed index".

I hope you're right that we're reaching a tipping point in customer attitudes.
I find it depressing that companies seem to get away with this stuff so
easily.

~~~
gjm11
The greed index doesn't need to be objective, it merely needs to agree
reasonably well with users' values. It seems plausible that users of such an
app would agree well enough for it to be workable.

Alternatively, instead of reporting a numerical index report a summary of
complaints made against the company. Downsides: more stuff to read; still
subjective; maybe more risk of lawsuits from complained-about companies.

~~~
voltagex_
I listened to a Hanselminutes podcast with the founder of iFixit today - it
seems like for electronic products, the repairability / planned obsolescence
of products should be a factor in a greed index

------
gjm11
I believe there's some evidence that more expensive placebos work better than
cheaper ones. It's entirely possible that these segmented Nurofen products
really were more effective in treating the particular things they were
allegedly for _even though the actual pills were identical_.

------
wisdomdata
as an australian citizen I am interested to know - would this be a ruling a
company could push for compensation on under the TPP?

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viraptor
Strangely, knowing all we know about the placebo effect, it's likely that
those overpriced non-targeted versions did help people more than either the
plain version or the genetic. Weird world.

~~~
gutnor
It works even when you know about it.

I only buy nurofen because it works for me better than the generic. There is
no reason for that, I know there is no reason for that, I know I'm an idiot
overpaying, I don't have pride or anything, I would be glad to have the
generic work as well and I try from time to time. But it does not matter, I'm
conditioned and I fear that the cost of unconditioning me would make Nurofen
works like the generic rather than the other way around.

