No, this is not the same. 

Under the MCI Ethics Regulation 2009 6.8, code of conduct for doctors and professional associations of doctors for their relationship with pharmaceutical and allied healthcare industry, the code of endorsement is described under Sub-section H.

“h) Endorsement: A medical practitioner shall not endorse any drug or product of the industry publically. Any study conducted on the efficacy or otherwise of such products shall be presented to and/or through appropriate scientific bodies or published in appropriate scientific journals in a proper way”. 

As per this regulation, a medical practitioner shall not endorse; which means that whenever a product is endorsed, his/her name has to appear before or after the endorsement. For instance, a doctor endorsing - “A coke a day is not harmful to health: Dr X”. However, if the same endorsement does not carry his/her name, then it is not an endorsement by a medical practitioner. For example “A coke a day is not harmful to health: Indian Doctors Association”. In the first case, the endorsement is by a medical practitioner and in the second case, the endorsement is by an association. Even though in the second case, the endorsement was signed by one of the office bearers, it does not mean that he himself is endorsing it as a medical practitioner as he is not giving his name. 

There is also a loophole in sub-section h; “any study conducted on the efficacy or otherwise of such products shall be presented to and/or through appropriate scientific bodies or published in appropriate scientific journals in a proper way”. This means that if somebody has conducted a study to test “whether one coke a day is harmful to the body or not” and if the inference of the study is that “one coke a day is not harmful” and the same study is published by the association in its own journal or presented in one of its own conferences, it gets relief from the clause of endorsement. 

In such a case, it can quote “A coke a day is not harmful to health: Journal of India Doctors Association”.