Views > October 5, 2006

Counterfeit Drugs: Infected with Greed

Counterfit drugs are flooding hospitals and markets worldwide.

By Terry J. Allen

Counterfeit pharmaceuticals are flooding hospitals, Web sites, pharmacies and street markets around the world. Visibly indistinguishable from life-saving medicine, the pharmafakes plague the developing world, affecting millions of people and undermining confidence in public health.

Counterfeit drug sales will reach $75 billion globally in 2010, a more than 90 percent increase from 2005, according to the Center for Medicines in the Public Interest. Some pharmafakes enter the United States hidden in plain sight inside the 70,000 packages of legitimate medicines that pass through JFK and Miami airports alone, each day.

But the developing world is where most fakes are manufactured, most victims live and where up to half the drugs in some countries are bogus.

Feeding on desperate need and feasting off fabulous profits, narcotics and arms traffickers are embracing this global industry. Lack of international agreement, uncoordinated enforcement and low penalties ensure that drug counterfeiters enjoy that most traditional of capitalist draws: high profit with low risk.

Part of the blame goes to a “war on terror” that has sucked up international policing efforts and “is making it harder to look at the fake drug trade,” Dora Akunyili told In These Times. In 2001 Akunyili, a pharamcologist in her 50s, accepted what has been called “the most dangerous job in Nigeria,” heading the country’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).

Until Akunyili’s reforms took hold, Nigeria was the epicenter of the pharmafake pandemic. In 2003, when surgeons there administered adrenaline to restart the hearts of anesthetized children, a useless counterfeit left four dead on the operating table. A painkiller made from toxic ethylene glycol killed more than 100 Nigerian children. A Nigerian newspaper reported that “80 percent of cases of kidney failure in the country are linked to the intake of fake drugs.”

The counterfeit medicine trade “is mass murder but not with guns,” says Akunyili. “It is solely profit motivated, but the money the counterfeit drug makers make can be plowed into evil. It is also a form of terrorism against public health as well as an act of economic sabotage.”

Akunyili came by her commitment the hard way: Fake insulin killed her diabetic sister. As agency head, she found that only 20 percent of the country’s drugs were legitimate and vowed to put the pharmafake manufacturers and dealers out of business. She raided warehouses, seized tons of pharmafakes, burned them in the street and ordered the arrest of notorious traffickers who had operated with impunity for decades.

The price that traffickers put on her head was evidence of the campaign’s efficacy. One day as she rode to work, assassins opened fire on her car. One bullet pierced her headwrap and grazed her skull. Another shot killed a bystander. Akunyiyi sent her children abroad and accelerated her campaign. She faced down threats, blackmail and a corrupt legal system that let off major dealers despite ironclad cases, one of which included a boastful confession.

Factories in China and India are the main source of a counterfeit trade that is growing faster than cholera in a warm petri dish. China’s new capitalists, skilled in knocking off Gucci and Nike, are turning to Lipitor and Norvasc. Some fakes are far cheaper that the real drug, some are not even a bargain, and some, especially a new wave of Russian knockoffs, are as effective as expensive originals. Consumers, however, have no way to know if their pill is crushed chalk or toxic waste; if they bought amusingly impotent Viagra or an antibiotic, an antiretroviral or malarial drug with doses too low to work, but high enough to encourage disease-resistant strains that circle the globe inside unknowing travelers.

“Bacteria don’t need visas,” says Akunyili, who argues that even if human compassion fails to inspire Western officials to tackle the problem, enlightened self-interest should. Health experts point out that 2 percent of TB cases are “extremely drug resistant,” and view with alarm a new South African TB strain, resistant to all antibiotics, that killed 52 of the 53 people infected.

The counterfeits also create resistance to public health campaigns. After watching pharmafakes fail or kill, people may reject polio vaccinations, anti-malaria drugs, and HIV/AIDS treatments and preventions. Experts worry that fake Tamiflu available on the internet may undermine efforts to contain bird flu if it evolves into a serious human threat. The pharmafake trade also lends credence to the view that all Western medical initiatives are profit-driven fraud and bolsters quacks promoting such home-grown tragedies as treating AIDS with garlic and beetroot instead of antiretrovirals, as Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, South Africa’s criminally deluded minister of health, has said.

As the trafficking grows, pharmaceutical corporations have failed to attack the problem with the zeal they unleash to maintain high prices, protect patents and create demand for new lifestyle drugs. Next month, I’ll examine that seemingly strange reticence.

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• Reader Comments

  Every serious scholar of the drug distribution channel recognizes the danger of counterfeits entering the supply chain through diversion and secondary markets.  We can stop counterfeits from entering the supply chain by putting counterfeiters in jail, monitoring the channel, and requiring all wholesalers and pharmacies to source legitimately. 

  So given the known dangers of counterfeits, why are Democratic politicians so eager to open our borders to reimportation?  Seems very risky given how much progress has been made in squeezing secondary markets over the past few years.

  Adam J. Fein
  http://drugchannels.blogspot.com

  Posted by adamjfein on Oct 5, 2006 at 8:19 PM

  >>>>So given the known dangers of counterfeits, why are Democratic politicians so eager to open our borders to reimportation?  <<<<

  Because they know you are a hustler?

  Posted by Spinoza750 on Oct 10, 2006 at 3:06 PM

  <<<Counterfeit Drugs: Infected with Greed<<<<

  The known disease is called capitalism.  Go back to the 1850’s New York City and the equivalent of fake drugs were regularly being sold. Go to the green grocer and his thumb use to be very heavy.  Greed, or capitalism has always been this way unless there is regulation and a different ethic prevailing.  For example, the number of scams practiced against older, poorer people in Sweden is lower than in the USA. Why? This is a combination of regulation but mostly an ethic that disallows capitalist greed.  Capitalism is not an economic system alone but it is also an ethical system.  What civilized people always have to do is fight against capitalism until it is completely overthrown.

  Capitalism is evil.

  Capitalism = might makes right . Do in your neighbor before he does you in. It is a dog eat dog world. Get yours. Competition is virtuous

  Socialism = peace with justice.  Do unto others as you would wish others do unto you. Production for use and not for profit. Cooperation is virtuous.

  Posted by Spinoza750 on Oct 10, 2006 at 4:03 PM

  The medical industry is exceedingly corrupt. Every aspect of it.

  Most everyone working in it are overpaid. The doctors are very overpaid (and often overworked).  Doctors should not be persons looking to make oodles of money but are looking to help people, the same is true of everyone in the field.  Most everything related to the medical industry is very overpriced.

  This is because the structure of the industry is based on monopoly.  The number of Drs. are set by the industry. The prescription drug racket is run on a mafia basis. The most corrupt is the insurance industry which scams off oodles of money for doing absolutely nothing.

  This is the American ideal system that the capitalist crooks want to institute in all industry.  It is a system for moving wealth from the many to the few.

  Posted by Spinoza750 on Oct 10, 2006 at 4:26 PM

  >>>The pharmafake trade also lends credence to the view that all Western medical initiatives are profit-driven fraud and bolsters quacks promoting such home-grown tragedies as treating AIDS with garlic and beetroot instead of antiretrovirals, as Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, South Africa’s criminally deluded minister of health, has said.<<<

  This is another problem. Many of the prescription drugs available don’t do anything. They are poorly studied as well as overpriced.

  It is reasonable to be sceptical of their efficacy and safety.  Many of the so called cancer and antiretroviral drugs seem worse than the disease. Many of the new antibiotics are not as good as penicillin.

  Lately a lot of medical research seems to have a high level of unethical practices associated with it; --- Especially the pharmaceutical companies underwriting of it.

  Posted by Spinoza750 on Oct 10, 2006 at 4:38 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 6 posts.

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