“Safe” Country Focus: United Kingdom

As my colleague Thomas Kubic recently noted, most supporters of drug importation have a faulty assumption that developed countries like Canada, Australia, Japan and the 27 members of the European Union (E.U.) are insulated from the global threat of counterfeit drugs. In the coming weeks, we will take a closer look at some of these so-called “safe” countries and illustrate why there is no such thing as a “safe” country when it comes to drug importation.

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Is Drug Safety in the U.S. Moving in the Right Direction?

Protecting the public’s health is an important part of the part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) job. And on May 7, the FDA proposed several measures that would allow the agency to better regulate the safety of Americans’ food and medical products. The FDA request for the President’s fiscal year 2010 budget asks for $3.2 billion to protect and promote public health. This figure, which is a 19 percent increase from the current FDA fiscal year budget, is a significant step towards the direction of a safer pharmaceutical supply chain.

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