Counterfeit Medications

Counterfeit drugs is one of my greatest concern when I started practising medicine. How can I be sure that the drugs I prescribed is the real stuff and not sugar water?


This is an interesting article from The Scientist that shares my concern.
The article is written by

Brendan Borrell

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The Counterfeiter

The story of how one of pharma’s biggest enemies was nabbed in Houston, Texas

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On May 25, 2007, Kevin Xu logged into his Gmail account and found a startling message from a man who could have been his biggest client.

From an office suite on the 28th floor of the Plaza Royale in Beijing, the baby-faced businessman had gone from selling shark cartilage and penicillin to Chinese hospitals and clinics to cashing in on the high-profit margins of the European and—he hoped—US pharmaceutical markets. Xu kept a list of 29 brand-name drugs he could deliver at cut-rate prices, from the baldness remedy Propecia to lifesavers like the antileukemia drug Gleevec. If it wasn’t on the list, Xu boasted that he could find a way to get it.

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