Pharmaceutical News 2.0

People who buy fake internet drugs could be risking their lives and supporting terrorism, according to an editorial in the February issue of IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice.

Editor-in-Chief Dr Graham Jackson, a UK-based Consultant Cardiologist, has called for greater public awareness of the dangers and consequences of the counterfeit drugs market, which is expected to be worth £55 billion by 2010.

“Harmful ingredients found in counterfeit medicines include arsenic, boric acid, leaded road paint, floor and shoe polish, talcum powder, chalk and brick dust and nickel” he points out.

“In one scheme, Americans buying fake Viagra on the internet were actually helping to fund Middle East terrorism, unknowingly jeopardising the lives of men and women serving in their own armed forces.”

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency estimates that nearly 62 per cent of the prescription only medicines offered on the internet, without the need for a prescription, are fakes.

“Alarmingly these include fake drugs that could have devastating consequences, like counterfeit medication for potentially fatal conditions like cancer and high blood pressure. Others can include no active ingredients or harmful ingredients like amphetamines.”

Although some internet pharmacies are legitimate, a significant number are illegal and often operate internationally, selling products of unknown content or origin.

“Counterfeit drugs may originate from many different countries, where governments have little or no controls in place, and be then imported into other countries without being inspected” says Dr Jackson.

“In 2004 Pfizer investigated one Canadian online pharmacy and discovered that the domain name was hosted in Korea and registered in St Kitts. Orders placed on the web were dispatched in a plain envelope from Oklahoma City with a non-existent return address.”

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BEIJING, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) — China’s drug watchdog promised to investigate how alleged counterfeit pills, which were made in China, ended up being used by the British National Health Service (NHS).

“We will conduct relevant investigations and will surely punish companies or individuals who manufacture fake pharmaceuticals for export”, Yan Jiangying, spokeswoman with State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) said on Wednesday.

“If we find any clues of illegal medicine production for export, we will track them down,” the spokeswoman told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

A London-based newspaper, The Guardian, said on its website Jan. 4 that “counterfeiting gangs based in China” produced some eight million fake pills which went to NHS patients last year.

Chinese police authorities recently traveled to London to discuss the growing problem, The Guardian said.

The information, however, cannot be confirmed at this time.

Yan reiterated China’s resolution to crack-down on importing or exporting fake medicines. She emphasized that the government adopted international principles and practices to regulate the issue.

According to Chinese laws, medicine exporters should acquire government-issued certificates to run their business. Exported pills should be accompanied by permission papers for sales in accordance with requirements of the World Health Organization (WHO).

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Mark Townsend, crime correspondent
The Observer, Sunday 4 January 2009

Counterfeiting gangs based in China are producing sophisticated copies of the world’s bestselling pharmaceuticals. In 2008 an estimated 8m of these potentially deadly pills found their way to NHS patients. The health of millions of people is at risk

They were made in China, labelled in French and then shipped to Singapore. They ended up in Liverpool and from there were sold straight into the heart of the NHS. As the criminal investigation continues into how a fake consignment of Zyprexa, an anti-psychotic treatment prescribed for schizophrenia, infiltrated Britain’s healthcare system last year, evidence is mounting that sophisticated counterfeiting syndicates are increasingly targeting Britain’s network of high-street chemists, hospitals and GP surgeries.

Figures collated for the first time reveal that British border officials seized more than half a million counterfeit pills destined for the NHS and high-street chemists last year, an amount equal to the quantity of counterfeit drugs found in the whole of Europe in 2005. So vast is the scale of the threat from fake medicines that public confidence in the NHS could be “completely undermined”, according to legal experts. Health officials also warn that the health of millions of Britons is potentially at risk.

More than £3m of fake life-saving medicines for ailments such as heart disease and cancer were intercepted by customs officials and the Home Office border agency in the first 10 months of 2008. Three consignments were each larger than 100,000 pills.

In response, customs has upgraded tackling the trade in fake medicines to “high priority”, the same urgency devoted to targeting heroin and cocaine dealers. Interpol recently revealed it was investigating reports that profits from counterfeit drugs are funding terrorist groups, including al-Qaida. Others warn that smuggling counterfeit drugs into Britain’s healthcare network could prove to be a terrorist weapon in itself.

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