System to catch fake drugs has idled for years
The news this week that a fake version of the cancer medicine Avastin has made its way into the United States highlights a longtime concern: There are few safeguards to make sure fake drugs can be spotted before they make it to your doctor’s office- mulberry bags .
“Even when the state system is regulating effectively, they’ve usually got one guy looking at 600 licenses,” said Tom Kubic, president of Pharmaceutical Security Institute, a trade association set up by two dozen pharmaceutical companies. “It’s a really easy system for the crooks to beat- mulberry sale .”
Supporters of a tracking system say that requiring unique identifying codes on all prescription drugs would help stop counterfeit drugs from entering the system. They say electronic barcodes or tags, which already are used in other countries like Belgium, Sweden and Turkey to screen drugs, would allow health care professionals to verify that the drugs they’ve purchased from suppliers are the same ones shipped from drugmakers.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, which represents nearly all large drugmakers, said the group has been reaching out to suppliers and pharmacies “to try to tackle the complex technological and operational issues presented” by various track and trace proposals .
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