White House: "We expect" Hong Kong to comply with Snowden extradition

[MADem]

64. Well, given that NO one--not them, not us--is going to "stop doing it" this sounds like a free for

all to me:

Yes they are after your shit, just like YOU are after everyone else's shit. Don't like it. Don't fucking do it.


Maybe you believe that "testing every shipment" is the way to go; I don't. I think factory and government standards--to include the exporting government's oversight--matters. If you have a favored nation trading situation with a country, that country should take steps to ensure that their factories aren't sending you shit--particularly when it is a country that is authoritarian and totalitarian in its approach to its citizens and has the depth and reach to do that kind of thing. It's the least they could do. Instead, what China does is adopt an "If we catch 'em, we kill 'em" attitude--and they plainly aren't catching them all.

A large proportion of the world’s counterfeit medicines originate in Asia and end up in the US and EU. In the EU, between 1998 and 2004 there has been a 1000% increase in seizures of counterfeit prescription drugs.

China in particular is a production center. In 2001 it was reported that Chinese authorities closed 1,300 factories while investigating 480,000 cases of counterfeit drugs worth $57 million.

The State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) of China announced that, from January-November 2005, it banned 114,00 unlicensed drug manufactures, destroyed 461 illegal pharmaceutical factories.

It is estimated that in China between 200,000 to 300,000 people die each year due to counterfeit or substandard medicine. And these are reported cases: the true number of cases is likely to be far higher.

Unfortunately, their problem is fast becoming our problem.

This past December US customs agents intercepted more than 50 shipments of counterfeit Tamiflu, the antiviral drug being stockpiled in anticipation of a bird flu pandemic. The fake drugs had none of Tamiflu’s active ingredients. Information on the packages was written in Chinese.

http://www.cmpi.org/in-the-news/testimony/counterfeit-drugs-and-china-new