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Cancer Care: The Deceptive Marketing of Hope
TruthInAdvertising.org 24 October 2018
Life
When it comes to cancer, there is reason for hope. Thanks in part to advances in the prevention and treatment of many early-stage cancers, the cancer death rate in the United States has been on the decline since 1991. But this hopeful narrative is tempered by the sobering reality that more than 600,000 people will die from cancer in the United States this year and over 1.7 million new cases will be diagnosed. And for those with metastatic or stage 4 cancer, it is still the case that the majority will eventually succumb to the disease. These statistics cannot be ignored in the messaging of hope for cancer patients.
 
As the cancer death rate has declined, advertising spending by cancer centers has increased — exponentially. Between 2005 and 2014, the amount spent by U.S.
 
cancer centers on advertising soared 320 percent, from $54 million in 2005 to $173 million in 2014. Today, there are more than 1,200 accredited cancer centers competing against each other for patients, who pay billions of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses for cancer treatment every year.
 
A yearlong investigation by TINA.org examined the marketing materials of the 50 cancer centers that spent the most on advertising in 2017. At the top of the list was for-profit chain Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), which accounted for nearly $69 million of the more than $140 million expenditure. What TINA.org found was that 90 percent of the top 50 centers still in business in 2018 – 43 out of 48 – were deceptively promoting atypical patient experiences through the use of powerful testimonials.
 
 
TINA.org has catalogued more than 700 testimonials featuring patients with cancer types that have a less than 50 percent five-year survival rate that have been deceptively used in marketing materials to advance the narrative, either explicitly or implicitly, that treatment at a particular cancer center will provide patients with a therapeutic advantage, allowing them to beat the odds and live beyond five years. In each of the 700-plus instances, the cancer center failed to clearly and conspicuously disclose what is typical for such patients, that is, a 50 percent chance or greater of dying within five years.
 
As a result of these findings, TINA.org has filed a complaint with the FTC against CTCA, a repeat FTC offender, and put the other 42 cancer centers on notice that they are engaging in deceptive marketing practices. (See more about these cancer centers below, under the subhead “Follow the Leader.”)
 
To learn about TINA.org’s investigation by the numbers, click here.
 
FTC v. CTCA — Round 2?
 
More than 20 years ago, CTCA entered into a consent agreement with the FTC that, among other things, barred it from making misleading use of patient testimonials in its marketing. CTCA is no longer bound by that consent agreement, which ran from 1996 to 2016. But that does not give the Florida-based company license to violate FTC law, which over time has only required more information when it comes to the marketing of atypical testimonials.
 
And the company’s advertising is replete with testimonials documenting the unusual successes of its cancer patients. In fact, TINA.org’s investigation catalogued more than 130 instances in circulation in 2018 in which a cancer patient with a life-threatening diagnosis was portrayed by CTCA as doing well after receiving treatment at one of the company’s five treatment centers. What’s missing? The material information that the majority of cancer patients with the same diagnosis do not survive five years….Continue Reading…
 
 
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