Global Tracking System Could Combat Fake Drugs in U.S.

Fake drugs are on the rise in the U.S. Gaps in oversight of drug wholesalers, lax law enforcement and ineffective tactics for tracking drugs as they change hands have all contributed to a growing trend of fake drugs flooding Western supply chains. Yet now, there may be a new way to combat this rise. Putting medications through a chain of custody like U.S. courts require for evidence in a trial may help stem the tide.

This call for a national drug tracking system comes only a week after the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors (for a third time) that it discovered a counterfeit batch of the cancer drug Avastin that lacked its tumor-killing ingredient. In addition, it comes on the same day that a report was released by the Institute of Medicine that shows the increase of faked drugs.

The report itself examined recent episodes of troubled medicines-everything from tainted doses of the blood thinner Heparin in 2007 to the appearance of fake Avastin. It also stressed that the problem required an international response since developing companies especially are at risk from fake medications.

However, a mandatory drug-tracking system could be the answer for keeping phony medications off of the market. Lawrence O. Gostin, who led the IOM researchers that studied the issue, said that the use of barcodes or electronic tags to verify that a medication and the ingredients used to make it are authentic at every step could help keep track of the drugs, according to ABC News.

Unfortunately, drastic steps like these are necessary, the researchers from IOM examined drugs that were so realistic that health experts couldn't tell the difference between the packaging of the FDA-approved product and the fake.

This tracking system may not occur any time soon, though. Some foreign governments have resisted coordinated law-enforcement pushes since they view the effort as a means of protecting trademarks rather than public health.

"It all stems from the conflation of public health issues and intellectual property issues," Gostin said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

However it happens, it's clear that some sort of tracking system needs to be put into place. Otherwise, this big problem may just continue to grow.