Newspapers around the country have begun running a full-page ad -- disguised to look like a regular news story -- filled with misleading claims for a new miracle diet pill called Apatrim that allegedly enables dieters to lose weight without either cutting back on eating or increasing their exercise.

Designed to look like a news article, full-page ads have run as recently as Tuesday in The Roanoke Times. They appear to be news stories, except for the tiny word "Advertisement" at the top. The ad from the official-sounding "World Reserve Monetary Exchange" has run in newspapers across the country since mid-November, including the Houston Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News.

Designed to look like a news article, full-page ads have run as recently as Tuesday in The Roanoke Times. They appear to be news stories, except for the tiny word "Advertisement" at the top. The ad from the official-sounding "World Reserve Monetary Exchange" has run in newspapers across the country since mid-November, including the Houston Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News.

Why did an ad designed to look like a news article appear in The Roanoke Times? According to Meade, it should have had a clearer label.

"Our standards call for ads that have the appearance of news features or news stories to be labeled in specific ways, to make it clear to readers that this is paid content," she explained. "In the case of this ad, which resembled a news story in its design, we made a mistake. It was labeled as an advertisement, but not clearly or boldly enough to meet our standards."

The ad from the official-sounding "World Reserve Monetary Exchange" has run in newspapers across the country since mid-November, including the Houston Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News.

"Hot off the Gov't Press," reads an ad that's appearing in newspapers around the country, "public handover of rare full sheets of money."

It even carried the byline of Mary Beth Andrews of Universal Media Syndicate (intended, no doubt, to be confused with Universal Press Syndicate, which carries columnists such as Dear Abby and William F. Buckley Jr.

Dr. Ronald M. Lawrence, MD, PhD, a neurologist in his mid-70s who has specialized throughout his career in the study of pain, agreed to a consent decree filed in U.S. District Court in Canada

 

who specializes in who was said in the ad to have conduced the "U.S. clinical study" of Apatrim, was sued for violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act "with respect to the marketing of dietary supplements" agreed to an injunction and to pay a fine for representations about weight loss products including ChitoPlex.