Counterfeit medicines. Bitter pills.

摘要: When the UK medicines watchdog unveiled its first ever strategy to tackle counterfeiting last week,1 it was responding growing concern about increasingly complex, dangerous, and expanding international traffic in fake drugs. A few weeks earlier, Medicines Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency had brought trial one of most ambitious prosecutions date, leading imprisonment four men for handling £1.5m (€2m; $3m) counterfeits.2 Other cases concerning still more elaborate schemes are scheduled months ahead. In past three years, agency has issued nine withdrawal notices suspect prescription discovered legal distribution chain, compared with just previous decade. Pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer have been forced into costly withdrawals batches their faked by criminals.3