Background
This Ruling forms part of a wider piece of work on ads making claims about the treatment of prostate issues. The ad was identified for investigation following intelligence gathered by our Active Ad Monitoring system, which uses AI to proactively search for online ads that might break the rules. See also related rulings published on 31 July 2024.
Ad description
A paid-for Meta ad for Mendio Life, seen on 13 March 2024, included text that stated “Are you tired of waking up multiple times during the night? Discover our Prostate Care Point Clip and say goodbye to pesky prostate issues and get your sleep back!”. The ad included a video that featured a voice-over that stated, “Say goodbye to kidney disease with acupressure”. A man then stated, “This AcuPlus kidney care point clip is worn on the acupoints of hands to promote kidneys health. This point is located on our hands and can reverse disease as well as keeping your kidneys healthy for a lifetime. Cure and prevent kidney cancer and kidney stones […]”
Underneath the video was text that stated “Sleep Better, Live Longer!” and a button labelled “Shop now”.
Issue
The ASA challenged whether the ad breached the Code because it made medical claims for an unlicensed product.
Response
Person(s) unknown t/a Mendio Life did not respond to the ASA’s enquiries.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA was concerned by Person(s) unknown t/a Mendio Life’s lack of response and apparent disregard for the Code as well as their failure to provide their full name and geographical business address, which were in breach of CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 1.7 (Unreasonable delay) and 1.7.1 (Compliance). We reminded them of their responsibility to provide a response to our enquiries without delay and told them to do so in the future.
The CAP Code stated medicinal or medical claims and indications could only be made for a medicinal product that was licensed by the MHRA, the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) or under the auspices of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), or for a medical device with the applicable conformity marking. In addition, the Medical Devices Regulations 2002 required that a medical device should be registered with the MHRA before it was placed on the market in Great Britain.
The ASA considered consumers would interpret the claims “Discover our Prostate Care Point Clip and say goodbye to pesky prostate issues”, “Say goodbye to kidney disease with acupressure”, “This AcuPlus kidney care point clip […] to promote kidneys health […] can reverse disease as well as keeping your kidneys healthy for a lifetime. Cure and prevent kidney cancer and kidney stones” and “Live Longer!” to mean that the acupressure clip could treat prostate issues, kidney disease, and kidney stones, as well as prevent kidney stones and kidney cancer. We therefore considered those claims were medical claims which therefore required that the product met the requirements for medical devices.
However, we had not seen evidence that the product was registered with the MHRA and held the appropriate conformity marking. Therefore, no medical claims could be made for the product. Because the ad made such claims, we concluded that it breached the Code.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 1.10 (Legality) and 12.1 (Medicines, medical devices, health-related products and beauty products).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Person(s) unknown t/a Mendio Life not to make medical claims for devices that did not hold the applicable conformity marking and were not registered with the MHRA. We referred the matter to CAP’s Compliance team.
