back to article FDA takes aim at illegal net pharmacies

The US Food and Drug Administration said it has completed a sweep of illegal online pharmacies that targeted 136 websites that appeared to be illegally selling drugs to American consumers. In a campaign dubbed the International Internet Week of Action, the FDA issued 22 warning letters to operators of the websites. It also …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    caveat

    "Websites peddling Viagra, steroids and other pharmaceuticals have emerged as a major source of spam over the past few years."

    But some of them also serve an important purpose for Americans who don't have prescription insurance and cannot afford to pay retail for necessary medications. When I was poor and uninsured, cheap diabetes meds from a net pharmacy in India kept me alive.

  2. Tom 35

    warning letters

    Well that's solved then, I'm sure all the sites will be shutdown by the time I finish typing this.

  3. jake Silver badge

    Gee, you think?

    "Taking these drugs can pose a danger to consumers."

    I say leave the illegal pill-pushers in business. Let Darwin sort their "clients" out ... It's more than past time that the gene pool has had a good "all the idiots[1] out" culling.

    I know, I know, the spam bandwidth is horrendous ... but most serious email servers have filters that are pretty much functional these days ... Give the spammers another ten years or so, THEN nuke the spammers. Think of the bandwidth we'll have after that ... another decade's growth in the network, fewer idiots genetically predisposed to download porn fueled by fake viagra AND less spam! Win-win-win! :-)

    [1] Please note that I'm not talking about folks who have real mental disabilities ... I'm talking about the freaking morons who are seemingly educable, but for whatever reason, refuse to understand how the RealWorld(tm) works.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    letters?

    great, now can someone get the UK government to follow their lead? next time the police decide to do a drug crack down don't bother with all those pesky annoying police raids smashing my door in at 2am, just pop a letter in the post and i'll have no choice but to destroy my stash!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Chems industry is so protectionist

    and pumps out some of the most vile concoctions know to man. And it is drug pushing in the nastiest sense, no means no, and to administer drugs to someone without their consent, since 2007 it is now considered torture under law, but obviously always has been torture.

    It is not that hard to make chemical compounds, and bio tech is making it even simpler. The FDA serves the purposes of a drug pushing cartel, their actions are downright immoral at best.

    The reason for the spam, is also because these outlaw Pharmacies cannot use legitimate channels of marketing, so again part of the blame falls on the legal system. Corruption is so widespread nowadays, that the system is just falling in on itself. What would be useful, are kits and knowledge on how to test chemicals, and of course open knowledge on the studies of their effects, but common sense seems to have left this planet a long time ago.

    Blimey we have someone calling for the nuking of spammers, but then makes an impassioned plea, not for those with real mental disabilities, well you may or may not have mental disabilities, but you are certainly morally and ethically disabled. Unsolicited email is an annoyance, bit like billboards, TV advertising, cold calling, we only have ourselves to blame. Should have started out with whitelists, and never given the airwaves away (should have been a free for all), in fact we could go to that. But thermonuclear war as the solution, perhaps a little drastic.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    All about the money

    This is all about money and protectionism. Buying prescription drugs in the USA is VERY expensive and they want to keep it that way.

  7. Andrew Penfold
    Flame

    Universal healthcare [flame bate]

    "But some of them also serve an important purpose for Americans who don't have prescription insurance and cannot afford to pay retail for necessary medications. When I was poor and uninsured, cheap diabetes meds from a net pharmacy in India kept me alive."

    Well Americans in the same situation today needn't worry about that, right? Those who can't afford insurance will have to pay a new tax of 2.5% of their income. And failure to pay that tax will attract a five year stretch in prison or a fine of up to $250,000.

    Problem solved. Oh, wait...

  8. Franklin
    Thumb Down

    Grounds to terminate?

    "The FDA said the notices sent to service providers and registrars may give them grounds to terminate service to their customers."

    The ISPs already have grounds to terminate service; violation of the ISP's Terms of Service. The ISPs can terminate the spammers any time they like; they just choose not to. Spammer money spends just as well as anyone else's.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @AC 08:36

    I was going to write something snarky here, but reading your post has disabled the portion of my brain responsible for coherent thought.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @AC 0252

    Of course, you're 100% sure that those drugs were 100% legit? No? They may well have been legit, but they may also have been chalk pills (unlikely) or made in the same factory as the legit drugs after it closed down each night by a bunch of people who run the machines to make the drugs, but don't bother with the quality control. You may have had 10%, 100% or 300% of the active dose, you may well suffer organ damage a few years down the line because of impurities in the drugs you purchased. I do not wish this on anyone, I really hope you got legit drugs, but you can't be sure that a cheapo internet pharmacy in another country is in any way legit.

    America needs to get proper health care, the amount of money paid for prescription drugs, even by those with insurance is outrageous. The NHS pays far less for drugs than US health companies and in the UK we only have to pay a few pounds for a prescription. All this for a relatively trivial amount of tax.

  11. SirTainleyBarking
    Troll

    @AC 0836

    You've obviously been making your own.

    I've actually worked for big farma. The quality control is very thorough indeed. It has to be because failure of a multiple stage synthesis using expensive materials is more expensive.

    If you want to have a go, restrict your bile and venom for the marketing and sales people. They are the ones who set the prices

    Troll

  12. JEDIDIAH
    Linux

    Nevermind fakes, fear the real stuff!

    It really doesn't matter so much if what you are buying is a fake because "the genuine article" is already quite capable of creating a cascade of related drug interactions. Modern pharmaceuticals are more than dangerous enough on their own. You don't have to whip up bogus hysteria over "fakes". The real ones will do nicely on their own.

  13. RegReaderInLancs
    FAIL

    Toothless

    The internet pharmacies are all hosted in China anyway, with infected machines dotted all over the world, mostly in the third world where bootleg copies of Windows with no security updates are the norm, acting as reverse proxies directing traffic to them. The spammers also use Chinese registrars alot of the time. How does the FDA think they're going to have THOSE services taken down? Despite making noises about stomping out spam coming from China, the Chinese government is more than happy to accept all the hard currency coming into the country from US-based spammers paying for bulletproof hosting in China.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Week of action"?

    As opposed to "Year of inaction" or what?

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    TWENTY TWO LETTERS?!!! IN A WEEK?

    How will they ever top that? I bet the spammers are really feeling the heat now.

    I wonder which twenty two they've sent; and what of the other four? Surely they used some of the letters more than once, did they count those?

    SPAMMERS, YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED! WE'RE COMING TO GET YOU! AND WE'RE BRINGING HELL WITH US!

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