Buy Propecia Online

Slightly over one year ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning about counterfeited drugs purchased from Canadian websites. These drugs – all requiring a prescription from a licensed physician – included Lipitor, Diovan, Actonel, Nexium, Hyzaar, Ezetrol (known as Zetia in the United States), Crestor, Celebrex, Arimidex, and Propecia.

The last, Propecia, from Merck & Co., is the first, clinically proven, pharmaceutical treatment to reduce hair loss and even re-grow hair in men. In studies in both the U.S. and abroad, Propecia was shown to restore some or all of the hair in approximately 80% of men who used it for more than two years.

The FDA warned users not to purchase Propecia or other drugs from websites that subscribed to the Mediplan Prescription Plus Pharmacy or Mediplan Global Health network. These networks, located in Manitoba, Canada, were apparently (and perhaps unwittingly) selling counterfeited versions of drugs like Propecia to U.S. consumers over the Internet.

The counterfeiting was not a new occurrence. In August of 2005, the FDA conducted an operation at airports in LA, New York, and Miami, and found that almost 50% of drug imports from selected countries were, in fact, fakes that U.S. consumers believed they were buying online from Canadian pharmacies (whose drug prices are cheaper than those in the U.S.). More than two-thirds of the drugs were actually manufactured in countries other than Canada, and nearly a third of those were contaminated or otherwise altered.

Drug counterfeiting is illegal for several very good reasons. Counterfeits cheat consumers, who could – for the same amount or slightly more – buy a real medication like Propecia from a licensed pharmacy. Counterfeits are also dangerous. They may contain fillers like talcum (which was never intended to be ingested) or toxins, which can sicken or kill. If nothing else, they often contain lesser amounts of the intended ingredient (which, in the case of Propecia, is finasteride) and will do nothing whatsoever.

More recently, in Brussels, the Europeans held the first parliamentary symposium intended to address EU drug counterfeiting. The discussion focused on several factors: European and international measures to prevent counterfeiting, newest industry initiatives focused on securing the supply chain of pharmaceuticals, and newly developed technological systems to monitor counterfeited drugs. The symposium acknowledged that, as the speed of transportation increases, the proliferation of counterfeit drugs is becoming an international health menace, and counterfeiters must be prosecuted more severely than international law now provides.

“For too long, we have underestimated the drug counterfeiting situation. It used to be marginal, it is now totally industrialized,” said Jean-François Dehecq, the chairman of Aventis.

In September of 2007, a young Nigerian was convicted in a British court of running counterfeit drugs like Propecia through the Bahamas into the U.S. Similar scams are gaining impetus, as borders shrink and trade increases between nations.

If you are using – or plan to use – Propecia, the warning is clear: caveat emptor (let the buyer beware). Purchase your Propecia from a recognized pharmacy in your neighborhood. The Internet, while a superior tool for research and communication, is also a minefield of scammers looking for your dollar and willing to sell you anything to get it. You don’t want your epitaph to read, “Hair today. Gone the next.”

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Pharmacies, Medicine, Legal, Propecia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.