Indian government warns Indian Medical Association against product endorsements

Two doctors in India who had steered the Indian Medical Association into agreements to endorse Quaker oats, Tropicana juice, and a brand of mosquito repellent skin lotion should be delicensed for six months, a government ethics committee has ruled.

The Medical Council of India’s ethics committee has said that a former president and former secretary general of the association who had authorised the endorsement agreement should be deprived of their licences to practise medicine for six months. The ruling, announced by India’s minister of health and family welfare, Ghulam Nabi Azad, in parliament on Friday, caps a two year campaign by an Indian ophthalmologist who had complained to the council about the association’s endorsements.

Under the endorsement agreement reached in October 2007 the association was to receive about $115 000 (£72 000; €84 000) a year …