Who’s Accountable?
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Ryan Haight. Marcia Bergeron. They paid with their wallets for diverted and counterfeit drugs. They also paid with their lives.
These tragedies have highlighted a few important facts. Someone hosted the criminal Web sites that sold these “medicines.” Someone enabled them to appear in Web search results. Someone processed the payments online. Who are these someone’s—and will they be held to account?
The sad fact is that we have no accountability for those who enable Internet-based criminal activity with medicine. Here’s a simple policy agenda for Congressional action:
1. Create a List of Legitimate Internet Pharmacies: The U.S. government should define a list of legitimate Internet pharmacies that meet comply with appropriate state and federal standards—or who participate in the VIPPS program.
2. Publicize the List: The government should share this list with all search engine and financial service companies to indicate which pharmacies are legal and allowed to operate.
3. Enforce the List: Assess fines for companies that continue to enable sales to the U.S. by companies not on the list. Hold them and their Boards liable for the dangerous drugs they are selling.
At the present time, the only parties who gain by Internet drug selling are the illicit Web sites who sell and the search engines who profit. There needs to be a focus on accountability and safety.
To learn more about how you can help protect our supply chain, regulate online pharmacies and fight counterfeit drugs, please visit SafeMedicines.org.
James N. Class, PhD
Dr. James N. Class is the Assistant Vice President of International Affairs for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the main trade association for the research-based pharmaceutical industry in the United States. Currently, Dr. Class manages PhRMA’s trade policy in Eastern Europe, Russia and Turkey in addition to handling a variety of intellectual property issues including biosimilars, anti-counterfeiting and regulatory data protection. Prior to 2007, Dr. Class worked as a liaison between anti-counterfeiting groups and was the Executive Director for the United States’ division of the Partnership for Safe Medicines.
In 2005, Dr. Class worked to coordinate establishing the first direct-to-consumer e-mail alert service on counterfeit drugs, which has since been integrated into the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Counterfeit Alert Network. In addition, he founded a news update on counterfeit drugs, which is sent out to the FDA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), local law enforcement agencies, industry and other communities. Currently, Dr. Class participates in the Interpol Intellectual Property Crime Action Group and the World Health Organization’s IMPACT Enforcement Working Group.
Dr. Class is an alumnus of Georgetown University where he received his PhD with honors in 2004.