"Short of a gun to the head, a greater threat to First Amendment expression can scarcely be imagined." - New York Supreme Court Judge J. Nicholas Colabella

Solal Technologies is suing Kevin Charleston for R350,000 because he wrote on the Quackdown website that Solal Technologies' magazine, Health Intelligence is a  "disguised marketing programme for Solal Technologies, a company that actively promotes pseudoscience and aggressively attempts to shut out valid criticism of its advertising."

Charleston will be defending himself against Solal’s charges. He will have the support of the Treatment Action Campaign. He will be represented by SECTION27. The case, when it comes to court, promises to be an important test of the right to freedom of expression, and the duty of companies to market ...

There's a deep irony in the latest edition of Health Intelligence (Edition 15 May/June 2012). In an article by staff writer Clio Stevens (Online Content Manager & Writer) titled Behind the scenes of pharmaceutical marketing: the details of veiled persuasion, she writes "We've published accounts of ... disguising marketing programmes as 'professional education'".

When evaluating survey data the devil is always in the detail. In a recent case the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) allowed Solal Technologies to keep crucial survey details secret. This decision deprived the complainant, Marcus Low, from an opportunity to interrogate spurious survey findings.

The Final Appeals Committee of the Advertising Standards Authority has overturned a ruling that an advertisement by Solal was in breach of Appendix F. The advert in question implied that a Solal product containing Omega-3 reduced the risk of heart disease. The original ASA ruling, following a complaint from Kevin Charleston, found that the advert breached Appendix F. This appendix limits what advertisers can say about a range of medical conditions, including heart disease. In ...

Last year Solal Technologies sent letters of demand threatening to sue Roy Jobson and one of us (Steinman) for defamation. They have not carried out that threat. Now the company is once again trying to intimidate those who criticise it.