Thread: Counterfeit Rx & non-Rx drugs (Dateline NBC)

If Dateline has not aired in your area yet, be sure to tune in. Call me naive that I didn't know this but there is a large counterfeit Rx and non-Rx drug operation sending drugs to your local pharmacy.

One of the "players" is said to be the Mexican drug cartels. The story centered on a woman from China who has now been apprehended by authorities in China.

Her copycat Viagra were so good that the chief chemist at Pfizer Labs had a hard time on physical examination determining which was the counterfeit and the real.

IIRC, the copycat Viagra had some of the actual active ingredient of the real drug but the balance of the tablet was drywall!

Tamiflu is also being counterfeited as is Lipitor and a fair number of other popular Rx drugs.

IIRC, Advil was being made in a lab in Colombia. The yellow coating was lead-based highway paint.

Another drug was composed of concrete.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13099555/

June 2, 2006 | 11:10 a.m. ET
Traveling through the world of fake drugs
(Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent)

I have three basic rules for doing investigative reporting in countries where governments frown on this sort of activity: get in quietly, get out quickly and make sure the video tapes make it back to New York.

In the case of our investigation into the world of counterfeit medicine we were fortunately able to accomplish all three. We had heard from people in federal law enforcement and major drug companies that the production of counterfeit medicine is exploding in places like China, Pakistan and India just to name a few.

About a year ago, we decided to try to turn our hidden cameras on this subject and now we’re going to take you along as we see first hand how counterfeit medicines can be smuggled into the U.S. without detection and perhaps even more alarming, how they could end up in your neighborhood pharmacy.

We posed as a company called The Hansen Group and started trolling the Internet looking for suppliers of counterfeit medicines. Within weeks, companies all over the world began offering us everything from fake Viagra to knock off Tamiflu, the drug that would be the first line of defense during a bird-flu pandemic. The supply line took us all the way to Hong Kong, where in a modern hotel room outfitted with hidden cameras, we met with a woman who told us she was a major player in this illicit business. Even we were surprised when the woman, who called herself Cherry Wong, agreed to ship us thousands of fake Viagra tablets a week, a deal that could be worth $10 million.

Pfizer, which makes Viagra tested some of Cherry’s product and found it to be, in fact, counterfeit, although it did contain some active ingredient.

It is an eye-opening investigation and personally alarming to see how much counterfeiting is going on. These drugs can obviously be very dangerous on many different levels.

And while you might think that by avoiding buying medicine over the Internet you can protect yourself, think again. As you’ll see in our story, medicine doesn’t usually go straight from the factory to the pharmacy. There is a complex network of wholesalers who buy and sell surplus drugs. In some cases, all it takes is some phony paper work and some realistic packaging for fake medicine to slip into the system.

The report on counterfeit drugs airs Sunday, 7 p.m. June 4, on Dateline NBC. Click here for more info, resources on fake drugs

I saw part of that. My son came over to tell me to watch it.

It doesn' surprise me - and I think our government knows about it, and has known about it.

How many people are going to die because of this. If they are duplicating blood thinners, etc. and a person dies, they will just say it is because of the heart condition. We would never know.

The only thing I can't figure out is if the drug companies are involved. If they are not, I can't imagine it would continue. They have great power in WAshington - so if they weren't getting something out of it -I don't think they would allow it to continue.

I also can't believe the pharmacies don't know. I would have thought they had a better way of checking the origins of their drugs. Do they buy from reputable drug wholesalers or do they just buy from the one with the cheapest product?????

I would like to see just one government agency that is capable of doing their job.

I'm going to ask the pharmacist I use if he can give me any insight.

Did you see the part where the original manufacturer is putting a chip in each package? If that chip is not there when the bottle is scanned, it is a counterfeit.

I missed the first part and an interruption on the home front :P caused me to miss the ending. No one else watched so they couldn't fill me in.

But I did see a man talking about his wife and Procrit. Do you know the details on that? Did she die?

A few months ago I called the pharmacist to ask if they'd changed generics on a drug I've taken for years. I told him it was if I was taking a sugar pill or a placebo. I'll have to Google and see if there's been any copycat of that one.

Geez, the world gets crazier by the nano-second!

No, I didn't see the part about Procrit - just the last part that you saw.

So India and Pakistan are doing this to us also?

Isn't that wonderful???

I watched it. Interesting show.

Originally Posted by nntrixie

No, I didn't see the part about Procrit - just the last part that you saw.

So India and Pakistan are doing this to us also?

Isn't that wonderful???

I don't think Dateline produces a transcript. That's unfortunate because there were lots of details I should have jotted down instead. Because I am afflicted with half-timers disease on occasion :P , I can't recall all the countries involved.

But I do remember that smirk-faced Cherry from China. Good they caught up with her. She was smiling all the way to the bank and didn't care if people were injured or died.

Not only are the drugs dangerous because they're not providing the actual active ingredient but the "ingredients" in some of the copcats are downright dangerous as well. Lead paint for coloring, concrete, gypsum.

Originally Posted by jp_48504

I watched it. Interesting show.

Mexican drug cartels. Labs in Colombia.

Yet another reason to put up a very large impenetrable wall!

any thing about insulin in that story?