‘Hitler’ crank sparks probe at birthplace
SUNDAY MIRROR It’s legal if you fill in the form
A WEIRDO who has started appearing in Adolf Hitler’s birthplace looking like his double has triggered a police probe in Austria.
Authorities are trying to track down the man, who is in his 20s and has the Nazi dictator’s distinctive haircut and tiny moustache, and find out what he is up to.
He has been reported several times in the sleepy town of Braunau am Inn, once at the house where Hitler was born in 1899 and another time looking at WW2 books in a shop.
In a bar he identified himself as “Harald Hitler”, believed to be the name of a German punk band.
One baffled local said: “We wonder what it means.”
Glorifying Hitler or the Nazis is a crime in Austria. A DAMNING probe by the Sunday Mirror has exposed online pharmacies who dish out antibiotics and other pills with scant checks.
It took just 60 seconds to get one prescription approved, three minutes for another and our team was even able to get multiple batches of pills because there was no apparent cross-checking.
The probe is even more alarming as the over-use of antibiotics threatens a global health crisis on an apocalyptic scale. Experts predict 10 million lives a year could be lost as bacteria grows increasingly resistant to drugs.
The drugs were available from Superdrug, Lloyds Pharmacy and other British internet chemists with just a few clicks of a mouse. We easily bought five types of prescription-only antibiotics – plus slimming and sleeping pills.
Doctors routinely approved drugs within minutes of us filing online forms, without ever speaking to the patient.
One request for six 200mg trimethoprim tablets for cystitis, costing £19.99, was approved by Lloyds Pharmacy Online Doctor just three minutes after we submitted a questionnaire.
Superdrug approved azithromycin, at £30, in 20 minutes. One investigator was also given prescription-only weight loss pill Beacita in just one minute by THE law says online pharmacies must receive a “legally valid prescription” to dispense drugs.
This normally means a paper or electronic prescription from your own GP. However, some pharmacies offer “prescriber services” where it is legal for them to give you a prescription following an “online consultation”.
Our reporters found in most cases this involved a questionnaire which was passed to a GP to approve, usually within minutes.
Superdrug. Our reporter said he was 4st heavier than he is but was not asked for proof – even when he collected the drugs from the store. A female reporter got the same pills from Pharmacy2U. She exaggerated her weight by 3st.
The online sites are acting legally so long as they conduct a consultation with a doctor. But in most cases, our reporters were asked to fill in questionnaires which were appraised by a GP without email or Skype contact.
The sites did not require us to notify our own GP, so we were able to get multiple doses from different outlets. While none of the sites are illegal, health experts raised concern.
The UK’s Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, said: “I’m a doctor. I clearly prefer a patient to be seen by a doctor or dentist.”
A n d wa r n i n g against over-using antibiotics, Dame Sally cited poorer nations where bacterial resistance had soared. She said: “It will be 10 mil lion deaths a year by 2050 if we don’t act now. What a tragedy to die of a drug-resistant infection because A