Fighting the growing menace of fake drugs
Excerpt…
LONDON (England) — A slim, easy-to-use device that checks the authenticity of medicines would be available in every pharmacy if Facundo Fernandez had his way.
The gadget he has in mind would provide consumers peace of mind about the safety and quality of prescription drugs — something that is increasingly a concern amid a rise in fake medicines.
A self-described optimist, Fernandez doesn’t think his dream is that far-fetched. “I think it’s possible,” he told CNN. “The technology is available. It’s a matter of making this really widespread.”
An analytical chemist and assistant professor at Georgia Tech, Fernandez has spent the better part of the last decade fighting the global battle against counterfeit drugs.
Taken with the intention of curing illness, phony pharmaceuticals undermine treatment, and in some cases, can have lethal consequences for their unsuspecting buyers.
Fernandez’s work revolves around a technique, called mass spectrometry, that identifies the chemical make-up of a compound. The process is usually time consuming, but Fernandez developed a procedure for speeding up the process.
The ability to analyze the authenticity of hundreds of samples of drugs in a single day played a key role in an international operation that resulted in catching a Chinese manufacturer of fake anti-malaria drugs last year.
Are you worried about the safety of your medicines? What do you think should be done to combat the problem?
Many of the world’s bogus drugs originate in Asia, particularly China, according to the U.S. Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. The fakes oftentimes are exported and change hands many times before reaching their unwitting consumers.
“These are criminal organizations that are manufacturing, distributing and selling counterfeit medicines,” says Thomas Kubic, a former FBI agent and president of the Pharmaceutical Security Institute, a group funded by drugmakers.
The growing trade has been fueled by the growth of Internet drug sales and the lure of lucrative profits. The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest expects global sales of fake drugs to reach $75 billion by 2010.
Victims include those like Nneka and Chimezie Ononaku, a couple in Nigeria who unwittingly poisoned their infant son last month after feeding him teething medicine that was contaminated with antifreeze.
Corporations, too, get hit. Drugmakers like Pfizer, whose erectile dysfunction drug Viagra is one of the most counterfeited drugs in the world, potentially can lose billions in revenue to fakes every year.
Read the rest of this article on fake drugs from CNN.com.
