As I wrote
a few weeks back, PharmacyChecker
filed an antitrust lawsuit against five organizations that we believe are largely
funded or backed by pharmaceutical companies. We allege that these
organizations have conspired to illegally suppress competition in the areas of online
pharmacy verification services and drug price comparisons on the Internet. The
organizations are the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP),
Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP), Partnership for Safe Medicines
(PSM), LegitScript, and the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies (CSIP).
As part of that suit, we filed a motion for preliminary
injunction to immediately stop the NABP from including PharmacyChecker.com and
this blogsite on its “Not Recommended Sites” list. That list was created to
ostensibly identify rogue online pharmacies but has included safe international
online pharmacies from its very inception. More recently NABP’s oversight has
been expanded, apparently, to also include sites—such as this blog—that help
consumers avoid rogue online pharmacies and find affordable drug prices!
Americans overwhelmingly believe that drug prices are unreasonably high in our country. Millions have looked to the Internet to find lower drug prices at pharmacies in other countries, many because they have no other choice. For over 16 years, PharmacyChecker has provided online pharmacy verification and drug price comparison information to help these people. As I’ve written about for years, the drug companies and U.S. pharmacy corporations don’t like this and take actions to make it stop.
PharmacyChecker has filed a lawsuit against organizations and companies that we allege are illegally conspiring to “to choke off information about personal importation of affordable prescription medications from regulated, reputable pharmacies in Canada and elsewhere overseas.”
Last week, an article was published by Jeremy Malcolm, senior global policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, under the appropriate title, “How Big Pharma’s Shadow Regulation Censors the Internet.” Basically, Jeremy explains that due to drug company money and political influence in the United States, there are activities going on both in plain view and behind the scenes that are meant to curtail and even end access by Americans to lower cost medications being sold on the Internet.
I’ve been writing about this – albeit in less Internet policy, theoretical terms – for years and testified before and warned Congress in 2013 on this issue. About a month ago, I published an article on Circle ID, a source of news and opinion about Internet policy and governance, describing the actions of drug companies to dominate the Internet. My hope was to reach people just like Jeremy Malcolm at organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). EFF is a non-governmental organization, founded in 1990 to defend civil liberties in the digital world. They champion “user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development.” Read about its awesome work and history here. (more…)
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A source for news and analysis about drug prices and safety, online pharmacies and personal drug importation, published on behalf of American consumers.
