Abstract

For many reasons, manufacturers of products favourably assessed in The Medical Letter are never given permission to use Medical Letter material or to quote or refer to The Medical Letter in their promotion of the product. In the past the U.S. editors of The Medical Letter have received many requests for such permission, but when our policy was explained to the companies making the requests, it was invariably respected. Now, a British firm, Riker Laboratories of Loughborough, has not only quoted from The Medical Letter (U. S. edition without permission, but has used verbatim a general statement about the antacid properties of calcium carbonate in such a way as to indicate that our statement referred to their proprietary mixture, Titralac tablets. It did not. Such advertising does little credit to the manufacturer and is an imposition on the physician.