Counterfeit Prescription Medicines Flood The Market

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It is estimated that 30 percent of prescription medications, even those that one may get at one's trusted pharmacist may be counterfeit. It is becoming a multi-billion dollar industry. The problem lies as you can imagine is that the ingredients in the counterfeit prescription medications aren't the same as the true medication and the results can often be fatal since many of these counterfeit medications contain toxic substances. The real problem lies is that pharmacist can't always distinguish the real vs. the counterfeit medications as they look identical down to the imprinted name of the drug company and the imprinted numbers on medications--the only way they can tell is to do a chemical analysis The worse offenders are the on-line pharmacies where one can often get so-called prescription drugs without even needing a doctor's prescription...the reason people turn to these on-line pharmacies is that the medications are often sold at a fraction of the cost, but it is estimated that one out of three medications are counterfeit Here's an excerpt from an article I found about this...it also has a great video to watch [i]The World Health Organization estimates that one in three drugs on the worldwide market today is counterfeit. Sometimes the fake drugs contain toxic substances -- chemicals that can kill. "We've seen boric acid, we've seen heavy metals, we've seen road paint, we've also seen floor wax to coat the pills and give them a shine," said Ford. "Obviously, they are detrimental to anyone's health." And the counterfeit are often produced in awful conditions, lacking sanitation or any type of procedure to keep the drugs safe. Kevin Fagan knows all too well the damage counterfeit drugs can do. His son, Tim, took critical prescription medication after he had a liver transplant. But every time he took a dose, his pain grew worse. After two months, the Fagans found out that the drug they had purchased at their local pharmacy was counterfeit. Fake packaging disguised the fact that the pills contained 20 times less of the drug than Tim's required dose. "My son was just wracked in extreme body cramps throughout his whole body," recalls Kevin Fagan. "He couldn't move his arms, his legs, his entire body was just racked in pain and my wife and I were absolutely frantic with worry." [/i] Here is the link to this article/video http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Story?id=5796287&page=1 So gee how nice...we the consumers not only have to worry whether our medications may have detrimental and serious side affects, but they might be counterfeit as well, making them either useless, ineffective or downright dangerous due to possible toxic ingredients. So next time you're taking a prescription medicine, one that you've trusted a long time and it just "doesn't" work anymore, maybe it's counterfeit {Warning: Link is not a referral link, but link to the article I'm quoting here}