FDA Net-regulations -- "Drug Lords" from HotWired

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 05:20:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: FDA Net-regulations -- "Drug Lords" from HotWired

http://www.netizen.com/netizen/96/42/global4a.html

HotWired
The Netizen

"Drug Lords"

Global Network
by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
Washington, DC, 17 October

   Forget the Communications Decency Act and the censor-happy
   Clinton administration.
   
   Instead, it now seems like we have to keep an eye on the pinstriped
   bureaucrats at the US Food and Drug Administration, who are hatching
   their own schemes to regulate the Net.
   
   I just got back from the agency's two-day conference in the Maryland
   suburbs, entitled "FDA and the Internet: Advertising and Promotion of
   Medical Products." Discussions drifted from troublesome-to-the-Feds
   notions of drug use in America Online chat rooms to emerging
   international Net-regulatory agreements, but all the talk shared a
   kind of benevolent paternalism.
   
   Consumers can't be trusted to make their own choices. The Federal
   government must protect us from reading what only doctors are allowed
   to see. Netizens can't even be trusted to figure out when they're
   leaving a Web site after they click on a link.
   
   Drug industry representatives on the panel this morning appeared less
   than overly concerned with regulatory threats to free speech. Jamie
   Marks from Body Health Resources said: "It's very important that drug
   companies police the sites they link to." The panel also discussed how
   to prevent sites that celebrate or even talk about illicit drug use
   from linking to sites operated by pharmaceutical companies.
   
   Even search engines like AltaVista could be hit by FDA regulations.
   Sara Stein from Stanford University noted, "Search engines have begun
   to sell links ... that's another area of disclosure that's required."
   Translation: the FDA is looking to have a say in how to label medical
   advertisements on Web sites.
   
   The FDA's also working the international angle. They brought in to the
   conference speakers from France, Britain, Switzerland, Brazil, and the
   Netherlands - all of whom were particularly interested in online drug
   promotion, since US advertising laws are currently so permissive.
   
   J. Idanpaan-Heikkila, the World Health Organization's director of drug
   management and policies, said that real-world claims promoting
   pharmaceuticals should be "in good taste," adding, "I think this is
   applicable to the Internet."
   
   Cedric Allenou, the French Embassy's health attache, predicted more
   controls: "In France, as in the United States, there is a lack of
   regulation on the Internet. But these issues will soon be discussed by
   the French government." When asked what his country would do if a US
   server distributes information banned in France, he replied: "If your
   Web site is not in France, you're not under French rule. This is a
   problem with French Internet regulation."
   
   John Rothchild, an attorney from the Federal Trade Commission - which
   will announce its own Net-regulation plan later this year - said:
   "Based on some hasty research I did last night, I can report it is
   feasible to control access to our Web site based on what country the
   accesser is in.... I don't know the technical details, but according
   to the technical people at the FTC, non-US domain names have a
   two-letter suffix."
   
   Rothchild apparently didn't realize that many companies outside the
   United States have domain names ending in nothing but .com.
   
   At the end of the two-day conference, meanwhile, the one question left
   unanswered by attendees was not whether the FDA should regulate the
   Net, but how long it will take them, and how far they'll go.
   
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