Fake Doctor Sold Fake Drugs in San Diego

Concluding an investigation begun in 2009, a Bonita man plead guilty today of 13 felony charges including unlawfully practicing medicine without a license and unlawfully selling or delivering misbranded drugs with intent to defraud or mislead.

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Fondation Chirac Hosts Fake Medicines Meeting

The Fondation Chirac held a roundtable on counterfeit medications at the two day conference, European Development Days (EDD) in Brussels on December 7th, entitled “How to Fight False Medicines.”

The panelists discussed cooperative measures to strengthen countries administrative capacities, build better health care facilities and raise awareness that fake drugs are dangerous to their countries’ peoples.

Said African entrepreneur and philanthropist Mo Ibrahim, “This is worse than drugs. People who buy heroin or cocaine, at least they know what they are buying, they are exercising their decision-making. But someone who has a heart or a kidney condition who buys fake medicine – this is an attempt at murder.”

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Orhii: Attention Must Be Paid

Dr. Paul Orhii, Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control of Nigeria (NAFDAC) exhorted strong international collaboration of drug regulatory agencies to fight counterfeit drug crime at the 14th International Conference of Drug Regulatory Authorities in Singapore on December 8th, 2010.

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Liang BA.*, Mackey T. Searching for Safety: Addressing Search Engine, Website, and Provider Accountability for Illicit Online Drug Sales. Am J Law Med. 2009;35:125-184.

Abstract.
Online sales of pharmaceuticals are a rapidly growing phenomenon. Yet despite the dangers of purchasing drugs over the Internet, sales continue to escalate. These dangers include patient harm from fake or tainted drugs, lack of clinical oversight, and financial loss. Patients, and in particular vulnerable groups such as seniors and minorities, purchase drugs online either naïvely or because they lack the ability to access medications from other sources due to price considerations. Unfortunately, high risk online drug sources dominate the Internet, and virtually no accountability exists to ensure safety of purchased products.

Importantly, search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN, although purportedly requiring “verification” of Internet drug sellers using PharmacyChecker.com requirements, actually allow and profit from illicit drug sales from unverified websites. These search engines are not held accountable for facilitating clearly illegal activities. Both website drug seller anonymity and unethical physicians approving or writing prescriptions without seeing the patient contribute to rampant illegal online drug sales. Efforts in this country and around the world to stem the tide of these sales have had extremely limited effectiveness. Unfortunately, current congressional proposals are fractionated and do not address the key issues of demand by vulnerable patient populations, search engine accountability, and the ease with which financial transactions can be consummated to promote illegal online sales.

To deal with the social scourge of illicit online drug sales, this article proposes a comprehensive statutory solution that creates a nocost/low-cost national Drug Access Program to break the chain of demand from vulnerable patient populations and illicit online sellers, makes all Internet drug sales illegal unless the Internet pharmacy is licensed through a national Internet pharmacy licensing program, prohibits financial transactions for illegal online drug sales, and establishes criminal penalties for all parties—including websites, search engines, and health care providers— who engage in and facilitate this harmful activity.

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Two Fake Drug Factories Shut Down

On Tuesday December 7, the Bangladeshi Rapid Action Battalion shut down and sealed two counterfeit medications factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

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Six Convicted of Conning Elderly in China

On December 7, the State Food and Drug Administration announced that six defendants were found guilty of selling fake medicines and sentenced to 1 to 3 years imprisonment with fines.

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Partnership For Safe Medicines (PSM) India Launches 24-Hour Helpline

The Partnership for Safe Medicines (PSM) India, a group of nonprofit organizations and individuals dedicated to protecting consumers from spurious drugs, today announced the availability of a 24-hour helpline (1800-11-4424) to assist, educate and empower consumers across India.

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