Correcting the Public Record about Online Pharmacies and Personal Drug Importation

by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Feb 19, 2015 | Pharmacychecker Online Pharmacy Report

Correcting the Public Record about Online Pharmacies and Personal Drug Importation

In July of the 2013, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report about Internet Pharmacies with a focus on foreign websites that I believe strongly distorted the public record about buying medication online through personal drug importation. GAO’s report was submitted to Congress in response to Section 1127 of the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act, intended to protect the public health. I wrote a report to refute the GAO’s positions in order to correct the public record regarding the intersection of online pharmacies, personal drug importation, drug affordability and the public health. I believe that my report about online pharmacies proves that the GAO’s efforts fell very short in getting to the truth about buying medication online.

Americans buy lower cost and safe medication internationally, often online, and it benefits their health and financial well-being. If it were not for the option of personally importing lower cost medication, often using the Internet, many Americans would just not be able to get medical treatments they need. People who can’t take needed medication often get sick and may even die.  The GAO report did not mention these facts.

The GAO seemed to conflate safe international online pharmacies with rogue online pharmacies in the same manner we’ve come to expect from the pharmaceutical industry, U.S. pharmacy trade associations and the FDA – by calling safe international online pharmacies “rogue.” The problem, for me, is that its lead author is not with the pharmaceutical industry, a U.S. pharmacy trade association, or the FDA. She is someone I’ve come to admire over the years just by following her work with GAO. So I can’t just say “look, it’s big Pharma again!” So for almost a year and a half I’ve written a report to, in part, prove to and remind myself that “we’re right and they’re wrong.” I’ve done that. I look forward to this report becoming a part of the public record.

Rogue online pharmacies, meaning drug-selling websites that are not safe (see my report for details), should be shutdown. Let’s get rid of them! However, if our elected leaders and regulators allow or enact policies to bring about an end to online access by Americans to safe and affordable medication and people get hurt, then they can’t say they didn’t know.

Below, I’ve pasted the cover letter from Tod Cooperman, MD, president of PharmacyChecker.com, and I that accompanied the hardcopy of the report we sent the congressional committees that received the GAO’s report in 2013. Each week we’ll be commenting on and posting the different sections of my report. To read the report now, visit “Online Pharmacies, Personal Drug Importation and Public Health”.

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