In his new book, “Phake: The Deadly World of Falsified and Substandard Medicines,” Roger Bate explores the underground trade in illegal medicines that kills over 100,000 people per year and supplants billions of dollars of real products.

With fakes of the cancer drug Avastin popping up in U.S. clinics in the past few months, patients are naturally worried about whether their medicines are safe.  Considering eighty percent of the ingredients in U.S. medicines come from overseas – mostly from China and India because their products are generally...

Many nations have aging populations, but none can quite match Japan. Its experience holds lessons for other countries as well as insights into the distinctiveness of Japanese society.

"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.

Abstract:

This study assesses the trade-off between drug safety and price savings in online drug purchases. Focusing on five brand-name prescription drugs, we acquire 370 drug samples from 41 online pharmacies and test their authenticity. Of the 41 websites, 8 are clearly US-based and verified by the National Association of...