Bad Medicine: The War on Counterfeiting

By Frank Goldman, PharmD.

W.H.O. defines counterfeit drugs as "those which are deliberately and fraudulently produced and / or mislabeled with respect to identity and / or source."

In September 2009, a 29-year old University of Maryland pharmacologist died following an allergic reaction to a counterfeit version of a drug that was legal in the United States, but had been purchased online from the Philippines.

Pharmaceutical counterfeits impact individuals and industry throughout society - not just patients at the end of the supply chain.  The Federal Drug Administration has opened offices in India and China in an attempt to monitor more closely the increasing numbers of pharmaceutical manufacturers in those countries.

The fact remains consumers continue to make purchases outside the secure supply chains, enticed by the availability of difficult-to-find drugs and gray-market pricing.

They can be travelers restocking their medicine cabinets while on vacation or merely Internet shoppers hoping to score deep discounts on pricey medications.

In 2007, the FDA examined nearly 4,000 packages at airports in New York, Miami and Los Angeles and found 85 percent of drugs ordered from what customers initially believed were Canadian Pharmacies actually came from 27 other countries.

Not surprisingly, a number of the products also were counterfeit.