AIDS Healthcare Foundation vs. Pfizer

The PR battle between the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and Pfizer is interesting for two reasons: 1) the apparently outlandish claim that Viagra has something to do with causing AIDS and 2) Pfizer's apparent inability to shake this group off. First, it's worth stating that there's a strong likelihood that AHF's suit--which claims Pfizer's ads for Viagra are 'misleading' because the company touts the drug as a lifestyle enhancer and not as a cure for a condition--is a legal nonstarter. However, AHF's concern that meth users are beginning to use Viagra as a matter of habit should be taken seriously, as should any kind of prescription drug abuse that leads to greater rates of HIV transmission. The key fact in my story is low down:  "...Pfizer would not have been targeted if it had responded when the Foundation first began urging Pfizer to change its advertising a year ago." Indeed, if you were a brand manager and a group of AIDS clinics came to you and said, 'we have a problem with your marketing--we think it's accidentally encouraging recreational drug use that leads to AIDS,' wouldn't you act quickly to head off that threat? The AHF told me all they wanted was for Pfizer to run a meth-AIDS awareness campaign--something well within the healthcare education piorities that guide Pfizer's DTC advertising principles--and that an expenditure in the thousands, not millions, of dollars would have sufficed (gay media print buys are cheap, FYI). But apparently Pfizer balked.