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  • Buying Medicines Safely over the Internet (Aug. 2005)

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Buying Medicines Safely over the Internet (Aug. 2005)

Many patients are now buying medicines and medical products on line. This can be convenient way to shop, but unless people are very careful, getting medicines on line can be a hazardous proposition. The FDA has a new brochure that can help guide people safely through the process. It's called "Buying Prescription Medicine Online: a Consumer Safety Guide." There are documented cases where drugs bought on the Internet were fake, or substandard in potency, or unapproved by the FDA, or counterfeits of approved drugs, or just plain dangerous. For example, in 2001, soon after the anthrax contamination incident in a Washington postal center, there was great demand for the drug Cipro. Fearing an anthrax attack, many people tried to purchase the drug and stockpile it. To satisfy that demand, Cipro - or products claiming to be Cipro - were suddenly offered on foreign web sites. There was no way of knowing whether what was being sold was manufactured properly, or even whether it was actually Cipro. For a later example, earlier this year, FDA warned consumers not to use a wide variety of home diagnostic kits which had not been reviewed or approved by FDA. The kits, sold on the Internet by a company called Globus Media, included home tests for pregnancy, syphilis and HIV. Again, there was no way to know whether these kits actually worked, and the manufacturer wasn't even identified in the packaging. So people could be testing themselves for HIV and getting erroneous results - and that could be tragic in many ways. The new brochure advises people to be sure to buy from a reputable site. To help do this, they should be sure the site is licensed by a State Board of Pharmacy. Some sites display a so-called "VIPPS® seal" (Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites™ Seal), which shows that they meet State and federal rules. And consumers should be sure the site has a registered pharmacist to answer questions.

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