Bayer to Pay $3.3 Million over One A Day

Drug company Bayer has agreed to a $3.3 million settlement after being sued for associating prostate-cancer claims with its One A Day Men’s Health vitamins. The suit was settled between Bayer and attorneys general from California, Illinois, and Oregon.

Oregon attorney general John Kroger accused Bayer of “deceptively leveraging fear of prostate cancer” to market its men’s health vitamins. According to the New York Times, marketing statements on the vitamins’ packaging included: “Did you know that prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in men and that emerging research suggests selenium may reduce the risk of prostate cancer?”

Bayer had also partnered with Major League Baseball on a “Strike Out Prostate Cancer” campaign, the newspaper reported.

According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), while Bayer claimed that “emerging research” showed that selenium may reduce the risk of prostate cancer, the company showed insufficient scientific evidence of this relationship. Contrarily, CSPI points to a seven-year, 35,000-subject, $118-million study funded by the National Institutes of Health that found that selenium does not prevent prostate cancer in healthy men-and that it may have contributed to an increase in diabetes.