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The Super Bowl debut by digital healthcare company Hims & Hers is now listed on the injury report as questionable, following attempts by a pharmaceutical industry trade group and two senators to block it from airing.
The Partnership for Safe Medicines (PSM) is pushing the Food and Drug Administration to call a timeout on the spot promoting its version of the weight-loss drug Ozempic.
“As a knockoff copy of a prescription drug, the commercial for this product should comply with FDA prescription drug ad rules,” PSM executive director Shabbir Imber Safdar wrote in a letter to the FDA, shared by Quartz. “We request that you act to enforce the laws and guidelines that protect Americans from misleading marketing in health products.”
Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) chimed in with a letter of their own to the FDA, The New York Times reported, claiming that the Big Game ad “risks misleading patients,” and adding, “Nowhere in this promotion is there any side-effect disclosure, risk, or safety information, as would be typically required in a pharmaceutical advertisement.”
The PSM also wrote a letter to Fox, which is airing Super Bowl 59, asking them to not run the “deeply troubling” spot, Quartz reported.
“This is a clear attempt by industry groups to cancel an advertisement that directly calls out how they are part of a system that fails to prioritize the health of Americans,” Hims & Hers said in a statement. “The system is broken, and this is just another example of how they don’t want Americans to know they have options. We’re calling for change, which means putting the health of Americans first through affordable and available care.”