Chinese counterfeit drugs

Zeppy

Does anyone happen to know if drugs of Chinese origin are sold in India? First the pet food scandal, now a poisonous pseudo-ingredient in cough syrup and cold medicine which recently killed 365 people in Panama. "See Tracing a poison's global path back to China," www.iht.com in today's front page news. There's been news of counterfeit (=totally ineffective) Chinese drugs elsewhere in Asia; but poisoned food/drugs are even more alarming.
Does anyone know how this plays out in India? People on this forum say they love to buy their medicines in India because they are so cheap, but what insures that they might not stumble on Chinese fakes?

capt_mahajan

Birds had mentioned this in the 'pet food scandal' thread here. Also in the newspapers in India, today.

I guess the chance of contamination is the same wherever in the world you are. Forget fake medicines, even from legitimate ones made from Chinese shady imports.

Noodle

The problem is, as far as I understand the article birds had linked to, that it doesn't even say 'Made in China' or some such thing. There is no way to know. The substitute syrup in that case went through many hands until finally being used by a manufacturer in Panama to make cough syrup.

I don't know of any medicine, cough syrup or otherwise, that states on its label where the ingredients originated.

Looks like we all take a gamble whenever we take meds

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Zeppy

Sorry to duplicate Birds! However, this news ought to be in Health and Well Being, not just in the Pets forum.

I think this is actually not true. In the U.S. there's the Food and Drug Administration--which was created 70 years ago, apparently in response to poisonings due to diethylene glycol in medicine! Then later there was a malicious poisoning scandal in the U.S.--something like strychnine in Tylenol bottles, I think in the 80s--which triggered factory-sealed packaging. There's also drug regulation in Europe, and I haven't heard about any counterfeit or poisoned drugs here either.

As for truth in labeling, if I were a Chinese counterfeiter, I would take care that "made in China" did not appear on my product!

capt_mahajan

All countries have such setups. Many (including the FDA) have not exactly covered themselves with glory in the past.

From the Washington post, April 23rd

The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...042201551.html


I think the danger is more along the lines Noodle indicates.. indication of origin of ingredients.

The benefits of globalisation! Imported poison

birds

I agree. It started as an animal concern but that appears to be just to top of the iceberg and slowly much more comes to the surface.

Even if you are not interested in animals, there is lots of interesting stuff on the pet food scandal thread which is not only applicable to animals like 'Alaskan Salmon made in China - http://www.journalstandard.com/artic.../opinion94.txt'

You may especially want to check out the information about most vitamins being made in China which I mentioned earlier on the pet forum on message 53 (sorry don't know how to make the link )

As I mentioned before, a label saying 'No Chinese Ingredients' would be useful.

Nick-H

Never mind China... India is perfectly capable of producing dud drugs all of its own.

In a country where a recent con was to sell empty fire extinguishers, what can one expect?

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kmalik

I think we should differentiate between contamination versus counterfeit/mis-labeled food/drug.

Contamination risks lie in most industrial and non-industrial processes. Not familiar with the Atlanta story, the California outbreak of E-Coli was due to some animal feces discharge from a nearby farm making it into the water used in the produce. Should be better, but a part of the risks we take. {BTW, it baffles me why I never heard of cases in India where animals and produce live in close proximity. But that's a different topic.}

The drug article, originally published by NYT, was highlighting a case of mislabeled product being produced by manufacturer never licensed to produce chemicals for human consumption. And, it involves multiple culprits - the original producer/labeler and the players in the chemicals supply chain (with no tracking to the source) where no one - including the producers of the cough syrup - checked the actual contents against the label.

So, while Chinese counterfeiters should get the blame, a bigger blame belongs to the drug manufacturer.