American Women are Threatened by Black Market IUDs

Since internet commerce ‘took off’ after the turn of the 21st century, black market medical distributors have profited off of American patients by selling them (and their medical practitioners) potentially dangerous counterfeit and misbranded drugs. One area where this problem continues to grow is in the importation of non-FDA approved IUDs.

Since internet commerce 'took off' after the turn of the 21st century, black market medical distributors have profited off of American patients by selling them (and their medical practitioners) potentially dangerous counterfeit and misbranded drugs. One area where this problem continues to grow is in the importation of non-FDA approved IUDs.

In 2010, the FDA warned healthcare providers that black market IUDs may be ineffective and unsafe and that billing for unapproved medical products could lead to prosecution for insurance fraud. Some medical practices, however, have continued to use illegally imported IUDs; between 2009 and 2013 39 individuals in 16 practices were disciplined for the purchase or sale of the non-FDA approved devices. At least 450 of the unapproved devices were implanted in women in Texas alone.

The FDA has continued prosecutions related to illegal importation of IUDs. In 2013, it warned 781 medical practices in 46 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico that products they had purchased from an unlicensed distributor named Medical Device King were misbranded or counterfeit. According to the Department of Justice, who indicted the president and vice president of Medical Device King in April 2014, those products included cancer drugs and imported IUDs.

Download and share the Black Market IUD Cases resource which highlights important cases of illegally imported, non-FDA approved IUDs that were purchased by doctors and inserted into unsuspecting patients at clinics in the U.S.