School kids' experiment sinks GlaxoSmithKline in court

School kids' experiment sinks GlaxoSmithKline in court

newsinfo.inquirer.net

WELLINGTON -- The makers of Ribena pleaded guilty Tuesday to misleading the New Zealand public about the drink's health benefits after being exposed by two teenage girls in a school science experiment.

GlaxoSmithKline's embarrassment stemmed from a school science project done by Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo at an Auckland high school three years ago.

Their findings were initially ignored by the company but came to the attention of the Commerce Commission, a business watchdog, which brought the court action.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is just one case. I wonder how many more products in various parts of the world that misled customers in its true contents.

And this particular true contents of a product as advertised was exposed by two teenage girls in a school science experiment and considered as amateurs.

The discovery should have come from such agency like FDA etc.





newsinfo.inquirer.net
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 27-3-2007 by searching_for_truth]

[edit on 27-3-2007 by searching_for_truth]

I only saw this today. I went shopping yesterday and looked at the drinks, I saw Ribena sitting there on the shelves, all expensive proclaiming it had uber amounts of Vitamin C and even went as far as calling its self antioxidant!

I stood there looking at this product remembering how Ribena (in the 80's) was seen as a bad thing to give to children, we should give them water and real fruit juice. I marveled at the complete turn around - the marketing that went behind it was most sucessful!

It took two school kids to find out that in fact it had NO vitimin C. This is FOOD! Why arnt tests being done like this all the time? Can they lable our food and drink with anything now? Will GlaxoSmithKline really be punished? No, another fine and mumbles about 'bad apples'.

Im looking at the Ribena I bought yesterday. Its says clearly on the front 'Rich in Vitiamin C a Powerful Antioxidant', then on the back it says 'Nutrition information: blah, blah, Vitimin C 40mg (67% recommended daily allowance)'. It also says in bold font on the back 'Each 250ml serving provides 167% RDA of Vitamin C.'

There is a phone number on the back too, you know Im going to give them a call, 0800 096 3666 (UK)

Ok, I just noticed, it said in the article that there was no Vit C found in the ready to drink cartons, nothing about the bottled variety that you add water too. Does this mean that their ready to drink Ribena does not use the same syrup as the concentrated drink? Well as I said I shall call them and ask these questions and see what happens. Ill post my findings.

On BBC Radio they were claiming this wouldn't apply to Ribena in the UK - so that's OK then

Ok, I called them. They are basically stating that apart from New Zealand everything on their lable is true, if it says it has Vitamin C then it has.

I did a quick search to see who else is running this story and I found this:

Guardian.co.uk

GSK said in a statement yesterday that concerns about vitamin C only affected some products in Australia and New Zealand."GSK has conducted thorough laboratory testing of vitamin C levels in Ribena in all other markets. This testing has confirmed that Ribena drinks in all other markets, including the UK, contain the stated levels of vitamin C, as described on product labels."

I asked the woman "If my son's school tested Ribena for vitamin C, would they find it?" She basically said they run their own tests and there is vit C in their drinks. I asked if tests had been done independently of glaxo and she asked to put me on hold while she found out. She came back quick quickly saying they have done the testing and she could get someone to call me back about this.

It would actually be quite cool if my son's school did run tests like the NZ school girls, give the students a sense of power through science... these two school kids (at the time) have landed GSK in court pleding guilty!

Heh, leave it up to a few school children to topple a multi-national corporate regime.
Well, perhaps topple is not quite the right word.
It's good to see though.
It's an interesting state of affairs when children are actually more willing to be scientifically skeptical than perhaps, most adults.

Interesting post good detective work for bringing it to our attention! I also love when the school kids win win win!

My favorite drug disposition:

neurontinlawsuit.lawinfo.com...

Neurontin (gabapentin), the anticonvulsant drug manufactured by Pfizer, Inc., is being investigated by 47 attorneys general for allegedly being illegally marketed and sold for off-label uses. Neurontin was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1994 as an add-on treatment for controlling partial seizures associated with epilepsy, and later approved for the management of postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) caused by shingles (herpes zoster).

They rolled the patent as this fiasco started to unravel, to avoid a big lawsuit. Claiming a backup company made the claims.
It's amazing that the clinical trials were successful for certain treatment options, the FDA accepted them; then it all hit the fan. I don't trust Pharmacopia as far as I could stomp them in the ground.

Originally posted by searching_for_truth

The discovery should have come from such agency like FDA etc.

You really think that that would make a difference? Seriously dude, the FDA and other regulatory agencies not only do not disprove the claims of companies but also keep many genuinely good drugs off shelves. It has statistically been proven that for the most part, the FDA kills more Americans than it saves.

It all falls under the premise that too much security can in fact hurt us rather than help us.

This was all over Sydneys news as well. It said on the news that the company has agreed to ditch the dodgy ads, as well as put flyers up in the drinks section of the supermarkets stating that the ready to drink Ribenas don't contain 4 times the amount of vit C than orange juice.

The fine of $100k was totally unsatisfactory.

They would've made million$$ from this dodgy claim. It would've been great if the judge had've ordered them to pay 10mil to some childrens health scheme as compensation.

Why od the girls not get a reward? All this says is that Glaxo messed up but there is no incentive to do independent research as these young girls did. Even without a college degree, they were able to uncover a huge fraud. This type of research should be encouraged and rewarded. All because a state funded scientist isn't behind the discovery does not mean that such research should not be rewarded.

Sadly, I'm hardly suprised I seriously doubt just about everything these drug companies claim. The FDA is operated by former drug company execs and they are working for the drug companies, not the consumers!

Normally, side effects are grossly understated while benfits are grossly overstated. I would surmise that most medications are probably worse for you than the stated benefits or symptoms that they claim to cure. The only medication I'll ever take is aspirin.

Something else about the FDA.

It doesn't conduct all that much testing.

The FDA may merely review the tests results that are turned in. This is why it is so grossly ineffective and would never catch something like this.

In many cases, one can develop a product, test it oneself, and turn in those results to the FDA. Since one is unlikely to turn in results that say the product isn't safe or doesn't contain what it claim it contains, cases like this are bound to come up.