The Travancore Cochin Medical Council (TCMC) will take up at its next council meeting the controversy over a misleading advertisement that was published in a section of newspapers regarding allergy test.
Issued by a diagnostic laboratory based in Chennai, the advertisement called upon people to get a wide range of allergy tests.
It had been brought to the notice of the council, said Rani Bhaskaran, president, TCMC. The issue would be taken up for discussion on its technicality and ethics, said Dr. Bhaskaran. “We do not have the mandate to regulate medical diagnostic centres, but there were also names of two doctors associated with the advertisement. That needs to be probed,” said Dr. Bhaskaran.
“As such, I am not aware of any controlling body on the advertisement of medical diagnostic centres. The Clinical Establishment Bill, which is under purview of the court, may have such clauses, perhaps,” Dr. Bhaskaran said.
K. Mohanan, member, disciplinary action committee, TCMC, and dean of the Kerala University of Health and Sciences, told The Hindu that the council would take up the issue with the Press Council of India and see whether it could act as a first check point in restricting advertisements of such kind.
Dr. Mohanan said the whole idea of conducting the test was absurd because on its own it did not have a clinical value. It was when an allergy manifested and came up in a clinical examination that the tests became useful to identify the allergen, he said. Besides, allergies could come up at any point of time.
Though the advertisement never claimed any cure, the manner of its position and display on front page could create a lot of impact, said Dr. Mohanan. It was similar to an e-commerce platform advertisement.
The social media had been debating over it for the last few days as an audio accompanying the visual of the advertisement made its rounds. What could be gleaned from the conversation of a doctor with the technician representing the laboratory was that the addresses given in the advertisement were only collection centres of blood samples and the cost of the test was ₹3,000.
The advertisement explained what allergies were and how the tests could identify allergens. It also gave an impression of some cure for allergies.
