Fake Drugs Have Real Consequences for Patients
Black market medicine is terrible for patients all over the world, including Americans. At best, counterfeit and substandard medicine may not adequately treat a patient's illness. At worst, counterfeit medicines may cause poisoning or death.
Each of the following stories mentions people who have been sickened or died after being treated with fake medicine. Every day, American patients are harmed when they break the closed U.S. drug supply.
A young woman desperate to lose weight died in agony a day after taking a lethal dose of a banned fat-burning drug she bought over the internet. Selena Walrond, who weighed 15st and was 5ft 3in tall, was so obsessed with being slim that she took five times the recommended daily dose. By Rebecca Camber27…
GUANGZHOU, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) — A 37-year-old man has died from the effects of a contaminated drug given to patients at a south China hospital almost two years ago, bringing the death toll to 14. The latest victim died on Wednesday afternoon at the No. 3 Zhongshan Hospital in Guangzhou, capital of southern China's Guangdong…
People are calling Marcia Bergeron the proverbial canary in the coalmine. The British Columbia woman was found dead in her home last December, filled by chemicals laced with lethal heavy metals believed to have been packed into a counterfeit pill she bought over the internet. She had ingested a drug produced in south-east Asia or…
LAHORE: A newlywed groom died on Sunday after taking sex drugs in the Green Town police precinct. Green Town police Sub Inspector Muhammad Ashiq said Shahbaz Ahmad (30), a resident of Green Town, got married on Thursday. During initial interrogation, he said, it was disclosed that on Saturday night Shahbaz after taking sex drugs left…
VANCOUVER — Shoddy pills from a bogus online pharmacy are to blame for the death of a 58-year-old woman from Vancouver Island, a coroner’s report says. Yesterday’s conclusion makes Marcia Bergeron the first clear-cut case of a death stemming from counterfeit drugs bought on the Internet, but it likely won’t be the last, said Rose…
VANCOUVER/CKNW – A BC coroner has ruled a Quadra island woman who died after buying and ingesting a number of drugs she purchased on line suffered from cardiac arrhythmia brought on by metal toxicity. And the report highlights the dangers of buying drugs on line. Marcia Ann Bergeron was 58 years old. She is believed…
OTTAWA, March 22 /CNW Telbec/ – A coalition of Canadian pharmacists and patients today called on the Regional Coroner for Vancouver Island to hold an inquest into the death of a British Columbia woman who died apparently after taking counterfeit pills she ordered online from a purported Canadian internet pharmacy. The Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA),…
A 23-year old man in Burma with malaria died because the medicine he received was fake, according to an investigative report by an international team of researchers published in PLoS Medicine. The patient went to a rural hospital in East Burma with a fever and was diagnosed as having a straightforward case of falciparum malaria.…
Rick Roberts knows first-hand about counterfeit drugs. Roberts, an AIDS patient, questioned his pharmacist after injecting himself with a drug that was supposed to help him keep weight on. Almost immediately, he felt painful stinging. He soon found out that the medication was counterfeit. “For me, the most present problem was not knowing and having…
A HOSPITAL in Jiangsu Province is investigating whether the death of two patients was caused by a fake drug made by a Heilongjiang Province drugmaker, a newspaper reported yesterday. The two men were injected with Armillarisin A made by the Qiqihar No. 2 Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, said the Modern Express. Wang Xiyong, 27, died on…