Botox Rival Issues a Pepsi Challenge

An upstart rival to Botox is taking a page out of Pepsi's 1970s playbook.

Much like Pepsi invited customers to taste test its cola vs. Coke, Medicis Pharmaceutical Corp. is putting its Botox competitor Dysport up against the leading wrinkle treatment.

The Dysport Challenge offers rebates on its own product and even offers to pay $75 toward a Botox treatment if customers aren't satisfied with Medicis' drug.

Dysport was just approved by the Food and Drug Administration for wrinkle treatment almost a year ago and it has a ways to go to catch up with Botox. Both treatments include injecting the toxin that causes Botulism into the face.

Botox sales declined 1 percent to $1.3 billion last year, according to the drug's maker Allergan Inc. Medicis' product group that includes Dysport had sales of about $134 million in '09. Certainly, Dysport is expected to eat into Allergan's Botox sales. But with less than 10 percent of the revenue of Botox, you can see why Medicis is being so aggressive.

Allergan, on the other hand, has been positioning Botox to treat things other than wrinkles, including migraine headaches. While it doesn't have approval yet for migraine treatment, therapeutic uses of Botox is now accounts for more than half of the drug's revenue. Allergan predicts Botox sales will be between $1.33 billion and $1.37 billion this year.

Dysport is only approved for the wrinkles. However, the Pepsi Challenge-style campaign is raising eyebrows among some doctors who question the ethics of the publicity stunt.

“It’s the treatment of medicine as a consumer product that seems a little creepy,” Dr. Carl Elliott, professor of bioethics at the University of Minnesota Medical School, tells the New York Times.