Did you know that the US ranks #1 in the world for reported incidents of counterfeit, stolen, and diverted legal pharmaceutical drugs? That’s what I read in a recent article in USA Today.
The article goes on to say that most estimates place the incidents of counterfeit pharmaceutical drugs in the USA at less than 1%. That may not sound like much, but according to Katherine Eban, author of a new book, "Dangerous Doses: How Counterfeiters are Contaminating America’s Drug Supply" less than 1% comes out to almost 30 million of the 3 billion prescriptions filled every year. That’s a big number.
I went to hear Eban at a recent book signing, where she talked about some of the reasons why it’s good to be in the business of counterfeiting legal drugs. In one example she gave, a counterfeiter changed the price of a single small vial of Epogen, a sophisticated drug used to combat anemia (in transplant patients, among others) from $250 to $4,700 merely by changing the label from the correct low dose version to a counterfeit high dose one!
Current market structure and lack of a mandatory paper trail makes this all too easy. I’m the daughter of two cancer survivors, so the thought that my parents might be taking counterfeit or contaminated drugs scares the daylights out of me. My guess is that everyone in this country is less than one degree away from someone who has a life-threatening illness and is dependent on drugs that are potential fodder for counterfeiters. Congressman Steven Israel (D-NY) is trying to change this by introducing legislation called "Tim Fagan’s Law" that would mandate a clear and complete paper trail for prescription drugs.