Police in China’s Zhejiang Province arrested more than 200 suspects on May 25, 2011, for allegedly manufacturing and selling fake medicine and health care products. Over 1,000 police officers from the Jinhua Public Security Department raided 41 locations and arrested in total 263 people, mostly originally from Loudi, in Hunan Province, reported the China Business…
Read MoreFederal authorities arrested a Detroit resident on May 26, 2011, for running a counterfeit medicine ring. Gene Hardwick, 49, allegedly bought hundreds of fake erectile dysfunction pills online for 50 cents apiece and then sold them locally for $3- $4 each, netting roughly $800 a month, reports the Detroit Free Press. Federal authorities were alerted…
Read More
The death of a London paramedic has been ruled accidental after she ingested a fatal dose of pills purchased from a foreign online pharmacy.
Lorna Lambden, 27, a paramedic and Masters Degree student at the University of Hertfordshire, was found dead in her home on December 17, 2010, after ingesting pills purchased over the internet without a prescription, reports the Daily Mail.
The coroner, Edward Thomas, found a fatal level of the drug amitriptyline in her blood. Thomas added that the medication had not been prescribed to Lambden, but suspected she purchased an equivalent called “amitrip” from a foreign internet-based pharmacy.
Said Thomas, “…four milligrams [worth of amitriptyline were] found in her blood, and a therapeutic level is about one milligram.” He went on to say that after taking the drug she collapsed and suffered a cardiac arrhythmia, reports the St. Albans Review.
Lambden’s family knew that she had trouble sleeping and suspect she purchased the medication to rest between twelve hour shifts with the London Ambulance Service, reports the London Metro.
Lambden’s mother, a retired accident and emergency sister, said: “It’s terrible that these drugs are so freely available online and people can buy them without seeing any warnings about the harm they can do.”
Coroner Thomas said: “Amitriptyline can stop the heart and I think that is likely here. Lorna would not have known it had happened. It would not have been like a heart attack.”
A Miami facialist has been arrested by police for allegedly perfoming unlicensed facial injections of counterfeit Botox that severely injured two people. Diana Marcela Cardenas-Gonzalez, 28, was charged on Tuesday, May 24th, of practicing medicine without a license, and practicing health care without a license causing injuries, reports NBC Miami. On September 26, 2010, in…
Read MoreUS FDA alerted US consumers to sibutramine containing diet capsules in early May, and now those same capsules have been found for sale in Israel, according to the Israeli Health Ministry’s Pharmaceutical Crime Unit. The drug was withdrawn from the US market due to safety reasons in October 2010, and has sent a “large number”…
Read MoreNew Zealand and Australian surgeons are warning people not to buy fake Botox injections on the internet after several people were severely injured and suffered life-threatening complications. The President of the New Zealand College of Appearance Medicine, Dr. Teresa Cattin, says that they often see women with injuries from do-it-yourself botox injections, reports MSN New…
Read MoreThis is a reprint of the FDA Safety Alert. All lots of Slim Xtreme Herbal Slimming Capsule, 30 Capsules/Bottle, are being recalled. The products were sold and distributed nationwide via the internet and at the company’s headquarters in Hollywood, Florida. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is advising consumers not to purchase or use “Slim…
Read More13,000 packages of a variety of generic medicines in approximately 400 cases were seized in a robbery from a tractor trailer parked in a secure yard in Jackson, TN on May 14, 2011. Securing Pharma reports that the stolen cargo included “cholesterol-lowering colestipol tablets, eplerenone tablets for heart failure, the antibiotics azithromycin and clindamycin in…
Read MoreDr. Mark Baron, of the School of Natural and Applied Sciences, published a study in the Drug Testing and Analysis Journal for May 2011 which exposes the likelihood drugs purchased on the internet may not contain the ingredients they claim. The study published May 20, 2011 in the Journal of Drug Testing and Analysis, purchased…
Read MoreThe California State Board of Pharmacy announced an investigation into people illegally selling prescription drugs online after an ABC Eyewitness news exposé. Eyewitness News reported Craigslist.org users illegally selling prescription medications through the online classified advertisement service. Virgina Herold, Executive Office of the California State Board of Pharmacy said, “It’s unfortunate that Craigslist is now…
Read More