Increasingly frustrated with the state of drug costs in the U.S., millions
of Americans have found refuge in ordering necessary prescription medications
online from Canadian or other international pharmacies for roughly a tenth the cost
of those at their local Walgreens, CVS, or other pharmacy.
For many years, consumers have been relieved to find the international savings
option after a simple search on Google or Bing. Among top search results for the
words “online pharmacies,” there was a list of the
safest international online pharmacies that sell to consumers in the U.S. and
also facts about the benefits
and risks of online pharmacies, including obtaining lower cost medication
from licensed pharmacies abroad. That is, until recently.
Unfortunately, we know that Google and Bing are working with Big
Pharma funded groups and programs. We believe this has led to censorship of
affordable medication access on the Internet.
Until we lower drug prices here at home in America, online access
to affordable medication internationally is clearly essential. But what if we
lived in a country where people were no longer able to find safe international
options online?
In an ideal world, search algorithms empower consumers to
find the exact information they are looking for on these search engines. In a
recent Google algorithm update (March 2019), which affected the “natural” or
“organic,” non-paid search results, we wonder if there was foul play involved
in which Google was caving in
to Big Pharma. The Electronic Frontier Foundation identified this problem
in 2016, in “How
Big Pharma’s Shadow Regulation Censors the Internet.”
The results at the very top of your Google search are often ads, which are of course paid placement: a different problem.
Those patients searching on Google for information about affording medicine through online pharmacies were significantly disadvantaged by the Google March 2019 Core Update. The reason is that results for PharmacyChecker ‘s verification and pricing information are now much harder to find than they were on March 11th, 2019— a day before the update.
According to a new study published by the American Enterprise Institute, the search engine Bing, which is owned by Microsoft, has added pop-up warnings to search results that increase the chances that web searchers will click to rogue online pharmacies. As the reports shows, Bing’s action appears to purposefully thwart safe personal importation of more affordable medicines. It is one of the clearest examples of censorship resulting from “voluntary agreements” among Internet companies, “encouraged” by regulators, that will threaten the health of patients buying medicine online under the guise of protecting them. Bing has placed warnings on its organic search results of Canadian-based and other international online pharmacies, yet the search engine fails to do so for many rogue websites, ones proven to sell counterfeit drugs. Here’s how that happened.
The problem is Bing’s use of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy’s (NABP) Not Recommended List (NRL). Many of the NABP’s programs involving online sales of medicines and educating the public about online pharmacies are funded by drug companies, and therefore supportive of the industry’s profit-protecting goals against importation.
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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.
