Glaxo kicked off its ‘educational campaign’ yesterday for Alli, its new over-the-counter diet pill, which becomes available next month. The drug is really Roche’s prescription Xenical dressed up in new packaging. Well, really half the dose. Xenical, you may recall, didn’t do very well, thanks to modest weight loss and embarassing side effects.

And what are those side effects? About half of patients in trials experienced gastrointestinal side effects, including leakages and oily discharges, although only 3 percent backed out.

So Glaxo’s educational materials recommend people start the program when they have a few days off work, or to bring an extra pair of pants to the office.

“We’ve done everything to go out of our way to be honest,” says Steve Burton, vp of the weight control division at Glaxo’s Consumer Healthcare (that’s him to the right, without an extra pair of trousers). “We’re taking a very different approach than the fad diets people are constantly exposed to.”

Burton says the campaign, which include a new book being sold in retailers, tries to give “people some pause” before they assume diet pills alone will work. Alli will come in “starter kits” containing a food journal, a healthy eating guide and a fat and calorie reference guide.

The message that Alli isn’t an easy fix marks a step in the right direction for drugmakers, says Michael Santoro, a professor of business ethics at Rutgers University. “One of the things we’ve seen so often in advertisements is that a drug can be an alternative to a healthy lifestyle.”

Santoro then raises a good point: should a diet drug have any role in a campaign about healthy lifestyles? What do you think?

Source: The Associated Press[tags]Alli, Diet Pills, GlaxoSmithKline[/tags]