Last July, the Food and Drug Administration advised manufacturers to add what are called physical chemical identifiers to their medicines. These are special chemicals, colorings or tastes that counterfeiters could not easily copy.
Bryan Liang is with the Partnership for Safe Medicines, an organization in the United States. He says the Internet is not only a place where people can get tricked into buying counterfeit drugs. It is also a place where counterfeiters can find all the materials they need to make them.
BRYAN LIANG: "The Internet is the Wild, Wild West. Anybody can sell drugs. Anybody can buy active ingredients."
He says the most important members of the "counterfeit detection team" are the patients themselves. He says raids on counterfeiters are often the result of information from people who bought fake medicines.
BRYAN LIANG: "The best approach is to know your drug. Know what they feel like. Know what they taste like. Know what your traditional reactions are. A person that knows their drugs and the effects of their drugs are in fact the best security against fakes."
And that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by June Simms. You can find last week's report on counterfeit drugs at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25