BMJ 2002;324:800-801 ( 6 April )

Editorials

Murder by fake drugs

Time for international action

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Until recently the most infamous internationally known example of fake drug dealing was Graham Greene's fictional account of a British fake penicillin peddler who was eliminated in the sewers of postwar Vienna in The Third Man.1 Unfortunately, malevolent dealings in counterfeit drugs are very much a contemporary reality. Notorious recent real examples include neomycin eye drops and meningococcal vaccine made of tap water; paracetamol syrup made of industrial solvent; ampicillin consisting of turmeric; contraceptive pills made of wheat flour; and antimalarials, antibiotics, and snake antivenom containing no active ingredients.2-9

In a recent survey of pharmacies in the Philippines, 8% of drugs bought were fake (quoted by Wondemagegnehu2). A countrywide survey in Cambodia in 1999 showed that 60% of 133 drug vendors sampled sold, as the antimalarial mefloquine, tablets that contained the ineffective but much cheaper sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine, obtained from stocks that should have been destroyed, or fakes that contained no drug . . . [Full text of this article]
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Rapid Responses:

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