Is the scientific information in these historic advertisements accurate? If not, why were companies allowed to make inaccurate or misleading claims?
It is important to remember that the scientific claims made in historic advertisements reflect the state of medical knowledge in their times, not ours. Many advertisements repeated what was then state-of-the-art knowledge that is now considered completely wrong. Thus the accuracy of advertisements has to be evaluated in the context of scientific thinking at that time. Most mainstream companies sought to stay with the general framework of accepted medical knowledge, knowing that if they did not, they were likely to get negative publicity and regulatory scrutiny. Various “watchdog” groups emerged in the early 1900s that sought to restrain unrealistic claims for health related products. The Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission exercised some regulatory control over product claims. Groups such as the American Medical Association and Consumers’ Research Inc. also sought to educate consumers about misleading advertising claims. But many companies continued to oversta
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- Is the scientific information in these historic advertisements accurate? If not, why were companies allowed to make inaccurate or misleading claims?
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