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Canadian Mounties seized more than 115,000 counterfeit pills during a raid at a Mississauga, Ontario, warehouse on May 13, 2011. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police estimates that value of drugs, combined with a stash of fake designer clothing, at $5 million Canadian, reports CNews. Mounties in British Columbia intercepted 15,000 fake erectile dysfunction pills packaged in individual blister packs in…
Read MoreThe United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has announced that it will take an active part in helping countries fight drug counterfeiters in a growing alarm over fake drugs impact on preventable deaths and super bugs. Says UNODC, approximately $1.6 billion worth of medication in Africa and Asia alone is being faked by growing criminal organizations. “Affecting both developed…
Read MoreA New Jersey couple pleaded guilty to charges they engaged in the unlicensed wholesale distribution of pharmaceuticals, admitting they sold fake drugs manufactured in India to customers in the United States. Nita Patel, 47, and her husband, Harshad, 53, of Closter, pleaded guilty in Camden, New Jersey, on May 16th, 2011, reported the North Jersey Record. FBi agents began surveillance…
Read MoreThe FDA has issued an alert warning American consumers to be on the look out for look-alike fake antibiotics. Dietary supplements purporting to have antibiotic or antifungal properties that actually contain no antimicrobial ingredients have been found in five states but may be found elsewhere in the US.
Read MoreThis is a reprint of the FDA alert. Fast Facts The FDA is warning consumers not to use products marketed as dietary supplements that also claim to be antimicrobial (antibiotic, antifungal or antiviral) drugs. These illegal products are falsely promoted with claims to treat illnesses such as upper respiratory infections, sinusitis, pneumonia, bronchitis and the common cold. The FDA has learned…
Read MoreThis is a reprint of the FDA alert. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers about a potentially harmful product represented as “ExtenZe,” a dietary supplement for male sexual enhancement. The counterfeit product looks similar to the actual product, but contains hidden ingredients that can cause serious harm to consumers. The counterfeit product has the following lot numbers…
Read MoreSpam-based advertising is a business. While it has engendered both widespread antipathy and a multi-billion dollar anti-spam industry, it continues to exist because it fuels a profitable enterprise. We lack, however, a solid understanding of this enterprise’s full structure, and thus most anti-spam interventions focus on only one facet of the overall spam value chain (e.g., spam filtering, URL blacklisting,…
Read MorePhoto of Google office sign by brionv via Flickr.
Read MorePaid advertising only 1/4th of the problem; rogue pharmacies still operate in email, social media, and organic search results
The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and many other news outlets are reporting that the US Attorney’s office of Rhode Island has developed an investigation into pharmaceutical advertising practices by Google that involve rogue online pharmacies advertising on the search giant. None of the articles mention the fact that illegal online pharmacies still show up in the organic search results.
“For years we have decried the ease with which rogue pharmacies preyed on consumers through search advertising,” said Dr. Bryan Liang, Vice President of the Partnership for Safe Medicines. “These rogue pharmacies have spent years developing their spam email campaigns, organic search rank, and most recently, their social media presences. Even after this settlement, they still pose a grave health threat to consumers.”
A recent study from NABP (National Association of the Boards of Pharmacy) found that 96% of the online pharmacies they screened online were not safe for consumers, demonstrating that the danger to consumers is still very pervasive.
Use of search advertising from Google, Yahoo!, and MSN has been a convenient way for rogue pharmacies all over the world to reach American consumers with their often deadly products. The problem came to light in 2001 when teenager Ryan Haight bought prescription drugs over the Internet without a prescription and subsequently died from an overdose. In 2004, all major online search engines adopted a third party verification service to screen out illegal pharmacies.
However subsequent research into online pharmacies by Dr. Liang and Tim Mackey identified purported verification services utilized by search engines were not filtering out illegal sellers. Further, independent entities Knujon and LegitScript later confirmed that the screening service was not keeping illegal pharmacies out, and that 80-90% of the ads being placed were from online pharmacies that violate state laws.
Read MoreAustralian customs officials in Queensland have stopped 288 packages containing counterfeit medications in the past twelve months, an increase of 7 fold from the previous year. Consumers concerned about costs, or purposefully circumventing the prescription process, have been purchasing everything from weight-loss pills to opiates on line. In many case, the drugs are marketed using commercial brands, but are counterfeits,…
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