Knoxville, TN - King Pharmaceuticals is spending more than four million dollars for two commercials and a five-second banner that advertise an American Heart Association (AHA) website during the Super Bowl football game this weekend—without even mentioning its own antihypertensive drug, Altace (ramipril).

The narrator in the advertisement urges viewers to complete the six-question quiz at www.beatyourrisk.com, a website cosponsored by King and the AHA under a three-year deal, but no mention is made of drug therapy.

As Duncan Mansfield, a reporter for the Associated Press (AP), writes about the ad, King is gambling on the fact that some of the 70 million people in the US with hypertension will be among the 90 million people expected to watch the game on Sunday.

"This is a reminder and a wake-up call," chief commercial officer for King, Steve Andrzejewski, is quoted in the AP story. "How does it tie back to Altace? Well, after people take the quiz, they are asked to take it to their doctor and have a conversation with them."

The ad features a gang-style posse of risk factors, clothed in black, attacking a man dressed like a heart innocently strolling along the street. The thugs—high blood pressure, diabetes, weight problems, and high cholesterol—beat up the heart man in an alley.