Scientists trace fake anti-malaria pills to dealer in southern China

[Joanne98]

Scientists and police have struck back against the global menace of counterfeit drugs in a unique collaboration that has led to the seizure of hundreds of thousands of fake anti-malaria tablets and the arrest of a key dealer in southern China.


In a stunning piece of forensic detective work, scientists who analysed pollen grains and minerals in the fake drugs were able to trace their origin to the Yunnan province of southern China, where almost a half of all blisterpacks of the antimalarial drug artesunate are thought to be fake.

The arrested dealer is alleged to have traded 240,000 blisterpacks of fake artesunate, enough to "treat" almost 250,000 adults with a medicine that has no effect on the potentially fatal disease. Chinese authorities seized 24,000 of the blisterpacks but the remainder are thought to have been sold on the border between Yunnan province and Burma.

Details of the collaboration, called Operation Jupiter, are published for the first time today in the online journal of the Public Library of Science, PLoS Medicine. The investigation was co-ordinated by Interpol with the World Health Organisation and scientists from the Wellcome Trust SE Asian Tropical Research Programme at the University of Oxford.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/scientists-trace-fake-antimalaria-pills-to-dealer-in-southern-china-781539.html

Is there anything lower than selling fake drugs to sick people?

[Warpy]

1. There's certainly a lot of low stuff out there

like selling scare stories to people so they won't get their kids vaccinated for things like polio, diphtheria and tetanus--all real killers. Like selling faith healing to people instead of chemo for cancers that can be cured. All medical quackery is evil.

China usually deals with guys like the ones who did this quickly and fatally.