Saturday
Mar242007
Unethical ShopOnLion
Sat 2007-03-24 In the original version of this post I suggested that ShopOnLion acted unethically by continuing to sell the bogus antimalarial Demal 200 after being advised not to do so. As explained below in the comments this was based on a misunderstanding and I withdraw that suggestion.
Reader Comments (3)
This product was made available at the request of church groups who used it on missions to Africa long before it was available on the ShopOnLion website.
When the product was listed on the website all the relevant information concerning the efficacy of homeopathic treatments was made available.
At no point were any exaggerated claims made about the treatment.
As previously mention when the MHRA requested the product to be removed it was removed during November 2005.
Accusing ShopOnLion of selling the product more than a year after it was removed from our catalogue and publishing accusations about the staff of ShopOnLion is defamatory.
Please remove this article or we will be forced to take legal advice in this matter.
However, the Internet Archive also shows the Demal 200 page ( http://web.archive.org/web/*sa_/http://www.giftofafrica.com/consumable/demal200.htm ) was not deleted at that time and would have been accessible directly from Google (which is how I came across it) until some time after 2006 December 12. I cannot say if an attempt to purchase Demal 200 via this route would have succeeded or not, as I didn't try it. In any case, it is fairly clear that the continued acessibility of the Demal 200 page was not intended by ShopOnLion.
In view of this I am willing to withdraw any suggestion that you acted unethically and will change the above post accordingly.