Legal Regulation And Restraint On False Medical Advertising

Medical advertising is playing an important role in our daily life. Today, the moment you turn on the TV, get online, or open a newspaper, medical advertising would dazzle you with their diversities. With the development of market economy, competition is getting fiercer every day, and some merchants will take every means, fair or foul, to gain profits. As a result, all kinds of false medical advertising flood the market, posing a huge threat to the safety of life and properties of patients. Although it has become a public hazard, a lot of false medical advertisements still teem in various kinds of media, which is worth some serious thinking.Advertising is usually divided into three categories in China– governmental ad, public service ad and commercial ad. While advertising in a broad sense includes all of the three, it, in a narrow sense, only refers to the last category, which is the target of regulation by Advertising Law of PRC. The medical advertising that is studied in this paper also belongs to this category, though its definition is not limited to medical service advertisement per se, but also extends to advertisements on medicines and medical appliances.False medical advertising assumes multiple forms, such as randomly tampering the approval, putting on a show by capitalizing on S&T concepts, borrowing the fame of experts to prove the product, and exaggerating the curing effects. Constantly prohibited but always recurring, false medical advertising has become a major public hazard. The reason for this is as follows. First, the specialty of information in medical advertisement and defects in the communication channel; second, loose management of the media caused by the immense profits; third, unclear division of administrative responsibilities and limited effects of supervision; fourth, insufficient strength in punishment and low cost of violating the law. This shows the many shortcomings in China's legal regulation of false medical advertising. For instance, legislations are too discrete or even contradictory to each other, no efficient monitoring mechanism has been established, civil relief is limited, and rules are lacked that restrain advertising with celebrities as the spokes-model. In face with the inundating false medical advertisements, the government feels it hard to supervise as they expect to. Regarding medical advertising, some call for complete prohibition while others prefer strengthening supervision. Analysis in this paper will show that the right way to deal with false medical advertising is not to call"cut"completely but intensify the legal regulation of it.When media is utilized to publish false medical advertisements in order to promote goods or services, the ultimate victim is the large group of patients. When administrative punishment is imposed on media, civil liabilities for the victim patients must be improved in the meantime. Directed at the deficiencies in China's legal regulation of false medical advertising, it is suggested in this paper to make the following improvements. First, adopt a relatively concentrated mode of legislation; second, set up a complete and effective supervision system; third, intensify administrative punishment; fourth, aggrandize civil compensation liabilities, including applicable punitive compensation system and presumed-fault liability principle; fifth, determine the legal liability for celebrities endorsing false medical advertisements; sixth, establish a complete representative action system; and last, enhance the self-discipline of advertising industry as a helpful supplement to legal regulation.