Paul N. Newton/Oxford University
REAL, FAKE A genuine hologram for Guilin Pharma, top, with a hidden number revealed under ultraviolet light. Above, a counterfeit medicine tries to replicate the seal.
Posted on 02/19/2007 10:23:11 PM PST by neverdem
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 antimalarials 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 A. 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 N. 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,” Dr. Newton said. “They’re produced on an industrial scale.”
China is the source of most of the world’s fake drugs, experts say. In December, according to Xinhua, the state news agency, the former chief of China’s Food and Drug Administration and two of his top deputies were arrested on charges of taking 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...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Paul N. Newton/Oxford University
REAL, FAKE A genuine hologram for Guilin Pharma, top, with a hidden number revealed under ultraviolet light. Above, a counterfeit medicine tries to replicate the seal.
Natural habitat, sewers. May they meet their end like Harry Lime.
If the ecowhackos hadn't stampeded the world into banning DDT, we wouldn't be seeing all these cases of malaria.
An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change must read
STATE GRANTS ANNOUNCED - STEM-CELL AGENCY GIVES FIRST AWARDS; BAY AREA RESEARCHERS GET 27 OUT OF 72 N.B. MSM recognizes teratomas in human embryonic stem cells.
Ask the Embassy how many work in enforcement. Ten? Two hundred?
Ask the Embassy how many people would be put out of work if the government really did "crack down." Ask 'em how long after that would the revolution start.
Even if the government wanted to crack down they simply cannot. There's already virtually uncountable unemployed -- including more than a million former military as Red China shifts from land forces to space age forces. There was a radio report of military warehouses being raided and cleaned out of weapons and material.
The "iron rice bowl" of cradle-to-grave care is no more.
Thus far, few counterfeits of life-saving drugs have been found in the United States.
Professor Navarro in his new book, the Coming China Wars, stated that the Triad organized crime group find more money in counterfeit products of all sorts than there is in illegal drugs. So check back next week.
So few lampposts, so many useful idiots -- and they will suddenly learn to love the "government interference" of taxpayer-backed OPIC, Ex-Im Bank, World Bank MIGA, and others paying them for their losses.
Bush's fault.
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