Hard to believe, isn’t it? Perhaps they were smitten with Dorothy Hamill. In any event, China’s drug regulators are threatening to pull the licenses of 16 drugmakers that allegedly ran ads exaggerating the benefits of their products. Nope, warning letters just won’t do.

The State Food and Drug Administration claims the ads contained “a large amount of unscientific assertion and pledges on the products’ benefits and effects,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported. And customers have been misled and laws broken, and the state FDA has ordered its local branches to ensure the companies remove the offending ads, according to the Associated Press.

Among the alleged exaggerations was a claim by Tonghua Shenlong Pharmaceutical that its Naoxintong medication could “produce an instant effect on a patient who has suffered heart disease for seven or eight years,” Xinhua said.

China has sought to crack down on violations by drugmakers amid a sweeping campaign to boost product quality. The step follows revelations of chemical-tainted, impure or spoiled products ranging from toys to toothpaste that have dealt a serious blow to the reputation of Chinese exports. China is raising quality requirements for licensing new medicines, and has ordered a review of 170,000 drug production licenses granted during the tenure of a former SFDA director who was executed in July on charges that he took bribes to approve untested meds.

Source: Associated Press