New York: Counterfeit medicines are on the rise worldwide, as criminals capitalize on the growing use of the Internet by consumers searching for inexpensive drugs.
Most copied: Tablets of Pfizer's erectile dysfunction drug Viagra. Photograph by JB Reed / Bloomberg
Seizures of bogus prescription medicines jumped 24% to 1,513 incidents in 2007, and illicit versions of 403 different prescription drugs were confiscated in 99 countries, according to the Pharmaceutical Security Institute, a Vienna, Virginia-group funded by 26 drug makers. The $3 billion (Rs12,870 crore) in counterfeit drugs seized include generic copies that violate patent laws and products that lack active chemical ingredients or contain improper dosages.
In the decade since Internet sites began selling illegal copies of Pfizer Inc.’s erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, counterfeiters have diversified, marketing pills to treat heart disease, arthritis, asthma, AIDS and cancer, according to the institute, which has been monitoring product seizures since the group was formed in 2002.
Copies of 19 of the world’s 25 best-selling drugs were among those seized by industry security, customs agents and police last year at ports of entry, in free-trade zones or at illicit manufacturing and distribution sites, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“It’s a big issue, it’s a global issue, it’s an insidious issue,” said John Lechleiter, Eli Lilly and Co.’s president and chief executive officer, in an interview at his Indianapolis headquarters.
New York-based Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, estimates it may be losing sales of $2 billion a year in Viagra alone, given how much of the drug’s active ingredient is produced in India and shipped abroad, says Rubie Mages, a company director of global anti-counterfeiting. Sales of the impotence drug in 2007 totalled $1.8 billion.
“Over the past six years we’ve seen double-digit increases around the world” of counterfeit drug seizures, said Thomas Kubic, a former US Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who is executive director of the pharmaceutical institute, in an interview at his office in Virginia.
“Oftentimes, the drugs that are being sold emanate from China, from Russia and from India,” says Steven Rucker, an executive managing director of Kroll Inc., a New York security firm used by pharmaceutical companies to track down counterfeiters.
Rucker says in the last two years, Kroll has worked for 10 drug and medical device companies, though he says confidentiality agreements prevent him from identifying them.
Fake versions of Pfizer’s Viagra and its impotence pill competitors—Levitra from Leverkusen, German-based Bayer AG and Schering-Plough Corp. of Kenilworth, New Jersey, and Cialis from Eli Lilly—have been traced to manufacturers in China and India.