"Phake: The Deadly World of Falsified and Substandard Medicines" explores the underground trade in illegal medicines that kills over 100,000 people per year and supplants billions of dollars of real products.

While counterfeits must be combated, drugs that are legally but poorly produced, substandard medicines-the subject of today's briefing-tend to get a free pass, even when they kill.

An intriguing experiment is afoot in some of the nation’s struggling public schools. New “Parent Trigger” laws passed in California and on the agenda in New York, Ohio, Colorado, and Chicago, allow parents of chronically failing schools to unseat the schools’ leadership and staff. But the initiative has pitfalls.

Ranbaxy continues to supply the developing world with drugs that are not checked for quality.

Ranbaxy continues to supply the developing world with drugs that are not checked for quality.

The recent heparin case illustrates that the high cost of health care cannot be combatted with the importation of cheaper drugs, many of which are risky andineffective.

Substandard and counterfeit drugs can be lethal to patients and accelerate drug resistance across at-risk populations.

Background

About a third of the world’s population, concentrated in poorer regions of the world, may be infected with TB, which generally lies dormant until the carrier’s immunity is impaired by another disease (often HIV infection). Without treatment, about half of the patients with active TB will die. According to WHO...