Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Fake Medications

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Fake Medications

    More fake stuff and bullshit from the Chinese. When will it ever end....

    This actually became an issue for me this past week. An antihypertensive that I routinely take for mild blood pressure problems apparently "stopped working". It caused me some difficulties, to say the least. Purchasing it from a small "corner store pharmacy", that apparently had Thai government approved pharmacists, was the problem. It's pretty clear that what I had purchased was a fake medication. I usually get this stuff from a large company pharmacy in one of the local malls; it takes them a week to ten days to get it from their distributor. I had purchased this from this different store on a whim; as they did not carry it, but "could get it" in a few hours, I became suspicious. But, the packaging, labeling, holograms, everything, seemed perfect. Just the timing seemed off.

    The pills themselves looked identical, but they acted differently. In the humid climate of Phuket, they tended to get "mushy", when the previous versions that I had used, didn't. It all came to a head when I started noticing some blood pressure problems that were not usual for me.

    Here's an article from the IHT. Read it carefully, and keep it in mind when you're traveling Asia. Purchase medications only from large, fairly well established companies. The "pharmacist down the block" may more than likely get his stuff from some distributor "down the block" who gets his shit from Burma or China. The distribution of these fake medications is presently on an industrial sized scale; these are not local house people making fake meds anymore.

    I could not tell the difference from looking at the packaging. In fact, sometimes they purchase real packaging, break the pills up, cut them down to unacceptable levels, and then repackage them in the original, or closely similar, packaging. You may never know that what you're taking is fake, or, even worse, adulterated.

    A growing epidemic of fake medications in Asia
    Fake-medication epidemic spreading in Asia
    By Donald G. McNeil Jr.
    Published: February 20, 2007

    Asia is seeing an "epidemic of counterfeits" of life-saving drugs, experts say, and the problem is spreading. Malaria medicines have been particularly hard hit; in a recent sampling in Southeast Asia, 53 percent of the anti-malarials bought were fakes.

    Bogus antibiotics, tuberculosis drugs, AIDS drugs and even meningitis vaccines have also been found.

    Estimates of the deaths caused by fakes run from tens of thousands a year to 200,000 or more. The World Health Organization has estimated that a fifth of the one million annual deaths from malaria would be prevented if all medicines for it were genuine and taken properly.

    "The impact on people's lives behind these figures is devastating," said Dr. Howard Zucker, the organization's chief of health technology and pharmaceuticals.

    Internationally, a prime target of counterfeiters now is artemisinin, the newest miracle cure for malaria, said Dr. Paul Newton of Oxford University's Center for Tropical Medicine in Vientiane, Laos. His team, which found that more than half the malaria drugs it bought in Southeast Asia were counterfeit, discovered 12 fakes being sold as artesunate pills made by Guilin Pharma of China.

    A charity working in Myanmar bought 100,000 tablets and discovered that all were worthless.

    "They're not being produced in somebody's kitchen," Newton said. "They're produced on an industrial scale."

    China is the source of most of the world's fake drugs, experts say.

    This month, the Chinese government announced it was investigating whether the former chief of China's Food and Drug Administration had taken bribes to approve drugs. The director, Zheng Xiaoyu, was in office from the agency's creation in 1998 until he was dismissed in 2005 after repeated scandals in which medicines and infant formula his agency had approved killed dozens of Chinese, including children.

    "The problem is simply so massive that no amount of enforcement is going to stop it," said David Fernyhough, a counterfeiting expert at the Hong Kong offices of Hill & Associates, a risk-management company hired by Western companies to foil counterfeiters.

    The distribution networks, he said, "mirror the old heroin networks," flowing to Thai distributors with financing and money-laundering arranged in Hong Kong. The penalties are less severe than for heroin.

    Daniel Chow, an Ohio State University law professor and an expert on Chinese counterfeiting, said he believed that the authorities would pursue counterfeiters "ruthlessly" for killing Chinese citizens but be more lax about drugs for export.

    "The counterfeiters aren't stupid," he said. "They don't want anyone beating down the door in the middle of the night and dragging them away, so they make drugs for sale outside the country."

    A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said that he had "no idea" whether most of the world's counterfeits came from China, but that Zheng's arrest proved China was cracking down. He also said counterfeiters would get the same punishment no matter whom they hurt.

    Many of the fake artesunate pills found by Newton's team were startlingly accurate in appearance — and much more devious in effect than investigators had suspected.

    Not only did the pills look correct, as did the cardboard boxes, the blister packing and the foil backing, but investigators also found 12 versions of the tiny hologram added to prevent forgery.

    In one case, even a secret "X-52" logo visible only under ultraviolet light was present, though in the wrong spot.

    But the most frightening aspect appeared when the pills were tested. Some contained harmless chalk, starch or flour. But the latest, he said, contained drugs apparently chosen to fool patients into thinking the pills were working.

    Some had acetaminophen, which can temporarily lower malarial fevers but does not kill parasites. Some had chloroquine, an old and now nearly useless anti-malarial. One had a sulfa drug that in allergic people could cause a fatal rash. And some had a little real artemisinin — not enough to cure, but enough to produce a false positive on the common Fast Red dye test for the genuine article.

    International Herald Tribune
    Experienced Community organizer. Yeah, let's choose him to run the free world. It will be historic. What could possibly go wrong...

    "You're just a jaded cynical mother****er...." Jeffpeg

    (more comments in my User Profile)
    russbo.com



  • #2
    And possible solutions besides boycotting chinese / asian bought western pharmacueticals?

    the W.H.O could probably take a series of prods over it, but if we're talking about standardising and facility to enforce that... see that is a big project.

    Blooming tianshi lotus.

    Comment


    • #3
      I dont know where you are atm, Doc, but just now doing some floor exercises watching the news, as you might, I caught an article that was saying that there has been contaminated batches of (sp?) cyclane out of asia that's been circulating America and Australia aswell.

      for those that dont know, cyclane is a similar drug to those above also prescribed for high blood pressure, and particularly post operatively.

      I find it notable the type of drugs that seem to be targeted though, because really all of the above you yourself mentioned are based on fairly similar diagnostic theory and adjacent philosophy and address a similar basal situation.




      ...interesting.

      Blooming tianshi lotus.

      Comment


      • #4
        There were problems with contaminated heparin, a blood thinner made from pig intestines (which you have a lot of in China).

        About 90 people had allergic reactions and died. In the hospitals....
        Experienced Community organizer. Yeah, let's choose him to run the free world. It will be historic. What could possibly go wrong...

        "You're just a jaded cynical mother****er...." Jeffpeg

        (more comments in my User Profile)
        russbo.com


        Comment


        • #5
          I stand corrected. the drug that I mentioned was actually called "klexane". I have cyclohexane on my brain atm apparently though, so haha. oops.

          here's another perspective on it from the New York Times.






          Blooming tianshi lotus.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by doc View Post
            There were problems with contaminated heparin, a blood thinner made from pig intestines (which you have a lot of in China).

            About 90 people had allergic reactions and died. In the hospitals....
            yeah. diied! apparently klexane and heparin are prescribed together .

            just wow. without other means for health management, ppl really need that stuff. not that we dont tolerate intolerance... and not that we know that that's what it's arising from, and no offense here, but I am Rrreeally glad I dont think I need any of it. shaolin medicine is quite cool like that. but we still eat so someone's going to b*tch about it.

            making drugs for a buddhist on stuff that comes from an animal when they know prior that animals would be killed to make drugs specifically for them... ?? does that happen? do you know that's my sole reason for not pursuing san shi dan to stay alive on until I have faciity for something else? that and I dont think can measure doses accurately, although there should be somme equipment or other I could use. hmm. but , no. do you know how many snakes would have to die a day? 3! at least.
            I eat meat if have to though.. nevermind.

            Blooming tianshi lotus.
            Last edited by blooming tianshi lotus; 04-23-2008, 10:12 AM.

            Comment

            Working...
            X