Missouri prohibits unsubstantiated cure and superiority claims

What the source requires

Missouri makes advertising a ground for discipline where it is "false or misleading", or where it "claims without substantiation the positive cure of any disease, or professional superiority to or greater skill than that possessed by any other physician". A separate clause, §334.100.2(4)(e), names "[m]isrepresenting that any disease, ailment or infirmity can be cured by a method, procedure, treatment, medicine or device".

Why this is hard to satisfy

Superiority language — best, leading, most advanced, unmatched — is the default register of aesthetic marketing, and the statute puts the substantiation burden on the licensee. A practice that believes its claim is true still has to hold evidence for it.

What we do about it

Detect superiority and cure constructions, then report them with the substantiation requirement attached. Bounded rather than deterministic: whether a particular claim is substantiated is not decidable from the page, so we report the claim and name what must exist behind it.

In build · phase one