FDA tackles gray area of social media

By Deepa Seetharaman

WASHINGTON (Reuters)- Drug makers, Internet companies and nonprofits called for clarity on what is a gray area for U.S. health regulators: how drug promotion on Twitter, Wikipedia, blogs and other social media can be regulated.

The two-day Food and Drug Administration hearing aims to find out if the agency needs to specifically regulate how drugs and medical devices it oversees are promoted on the Internet.

"The lack of clarity today is creating confusion among the advertising community," said David Zinman, vice president at Yahoo Inc.

The FDA already has strict rules governing what drug makers can say in magazine, newspaper and television advertisements, but the fast-evolving online world is a Wild West when it comes to what is -- and is not -- possible to regulate.

In April, the FDA sent warning letters to 14 companies including Eli Lilly and Co and Merck & Co Inc about their drug marketing online, saying that ads for certain products were misleading and did not contain any risk information.

Since those letters, pharmaceutical companies have changed the way they design their ads and no longer include the brand name, Google Inc and Yahoo representatives said.

Google officials said the click-through rate on these ads "dramatically decreased" after April. They offered another ad design that offers consumers links to risk information.

"Users see all these links and they don't know exactly where they're going until they get there," Zinman said.