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Quotes about Counterfeit Drugs from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"The issue of counterfeit drugs provides a good example. In the past few years, many American senior citizens have been taking bus rides to Canada to buy prescription drugs to avoid prices in the United States that average up to 70 percent higher. Others are ordering drugs by mail and over the Internet from Canadian pharmacies. This end run around the high price of drugs in the United States is costing the drug companies significant profits—about $350 million to $650 million worth of drugs are purchased by Americans at the lower Canadian prices each year." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "In July 2003, FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan announced a new initiative to protect Americans from counterfeit drugs that were purportedly being substituted for drugs that were "safe and effective." For example, an article in the September 22, 2003, Wall Street Journal was headlined "Fakes in the Medicine Chest." The article reported that the FDA had noted an alarming increase in counterfeit prescription drugs entering the United States." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "And the real truth about counterfeit drugs from Canada? Jirina Vlk, spokesperson for Health Canada, the equivalent of the FDA, told me on January 28, 2004, that she was not aware of any counterfeit drug's ever having been sent from a registered Canadian pharmacy or pharmacist to the United States. Public relations campaigns are also waged in support of specific drugs. This occurs both around the initial introduction of a new drug and to help a drug that is not living up to its anticipated market potential." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"When most people think about counterfeit drugs, they picture some sleazy operator who sells bogus Viagra (sildenafil) from an offshore Web site to gullible victims in America. The FDA has bolstered this belief by warning people not to buy drugs over the Internet. No one imagines that counterfeit medications could be sitting on shelves in American pharmacies." - Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D., Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy (Get the book.) "Most of the law enforcement attention that has been devoted to counterfeit drugs has focused on high-priced prescriptions. These are drugs like Lipitor (atorvastatin) for cholesterol control, Serostim (somatropin) for AIDS, and Epogen (epoetin alfa), Neupogen (filgrastim), and Procrit (erythropoietin) for blood disorders associated with cancer chemotherapy. What no one knows is whether the counterfeiters have penetrated the generics marketplace. As far as we can tell, investigators have not even bothered to look because they have figured that generic drugs are small potatoes." - Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D., Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy (Get the book.) "Although we are very concerned about counterfeit drugs and lax FDA monitoring, we do not think you need to give up on all generic drugs just yet. After all, they can represent a savings of 40 to 80 percent over the cost of some brand-name products. And the good news is that the FDA has announced that it has become very concerned about the counterfeit drug problem (though it still believes this is "quite rare within the US drug distribution system")." - Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D., Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy (Get the book.)

"The reason given is that the ban protects Americans from counterfeit drugs, but surely another reason is the industry's insistence that it should be shielded from "unfair" Canadian price competition. An industry that wraps itself in free market rhetoric was insisting that competition from other countries be outlawed. It pulled up the drawbridges over the moat around the United States, so that Americans would not realize the extent to which they were being overcharged. It worked for a while, but no longer." - Marcia Angell, M.D., The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It (Get the book.) "It is true that counterfeit drugs are an increasing problem. The reasons have to do with the sophisticated technologies available for changing labels and increasingly tortuous supply lines. Often there is not just one wholesaler but multiple secondary ones. Manufacturing operations themselves are far-flung. In fact, large drug companies have many plants scattered throughout the world. According to its website, for instance, in 2003 Pfizer claimed to have sixty manufacturing plants in thirty-two countries." - Marcia Angell, M.D., The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It (Get the book.) "One is the unlikely worry about counterfeit drugs being transported to the United States from Canada—an unpersuasive argument I have already discussed. In addition to being hard to take seriously, this argument implies that even British companies, like GlaxoSmithKline, are more concerned about the safety of Americans than about that of Canadians. The second justification is that drug companies need the high profits from U.S. sales to fund their R&D. That argument, too, is unconvincing, as we have seen." - Marcia Angell, M.D., The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It (Get the book.)

"Drug companies keep the information they have strictly confidential. The reason given for this secrecy is that companies are afraid that if it becomes known that one of their products has been counterfeited, people will stop buying it and purchase a competitor's product even after the counterfeit product has been destroyed."17 —M. M. Reidenberg and B. A." - Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D., Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy (Get the book.)

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