“A new report by the European Alliance for Access to Safe Medicine (EAASM), the results of which were released last week at the 4th Global Forum on Pharmaceutical Anticounterfeting, suggests the problem may be worse than regulatory agencies heretofore anticipated. In fact, more than half (62%) of all medicines bought on-line were fakes, and nearly 96% of the virtual pharmacies under study operated illegally, according to Jim Thomson, chair of the patients’ rights group, which is based in Surrey, UK. ‘The results of our investigation are shocking,’ he told the Forum. ‘It is astonishing to me that if I input “buy Viagra” on my computer, I will get nearly 12 million hits. On the other hand, if I enter “child porn” I will get nothing.’ The EAASM study, called ‘The Counterfeiting Superhighway,’ was designed to determine the proportion of internet pharmacies that act unlawfully and the percentage of counterfeit or substandard drugs that are sold.” (06/11/08)