Canadians tied to fake cancer drug probe in U.S.
Pressure grows south of border to crack down on foreign suppliers
Two Canadians involved in the multimillion-dollar Internet pharmacy business have been drawn into a U.S. investigation into how fake cancer drugs may have entered the U.S. market, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
One of the men acknowledges his companies unwittingly shipped fake vials of Roche Holding AG’S cancer drug Avastin late last year, emphasizing he had no knowledge the drugs were counterfeit.
“We’re deeply horrified by this counterfeit (product) being sold by one of my companies,” said Thomas Haughton, a Canadian citizen who lives in Barbados.
Haughton runs a network of drug distributors that sell to doctors in the U.S.
“We’re doing everything we can to be sure that this never happens again,” Haughton said.
The other Canadian businessman, Kris Thorkelson, a Winnipeg-based pharmacist and Haughton’s brother-inlaw, was also named in subpoenas to U.S. doctors, along with his online pharmacy Canadadrugs.com, the Wall Street Journal said.
Canadadrugs’ chief business development officer, Brock Gunter-smith, told the Star in an email that the company has never sold Avastin.
“There is no evidence that any tainted product has ever come through Canada Drugs, but we are doing everything possible to mitigate any future concern,” Gunter-smith said in the email message.
Canadadrugs.com is licensed and regulated by the Manitoba Pharmaceutical Association and Health Canada, he added. Avastin is an injectable drug normally administered in a doctor’s office, medical clinic or hospital. There is no indication the fake drug entered the Canadian market. The Canadian connection in the fake Avastin case comes amid growing pressure south of the border to crack down on foreign-based suppliers of non-fda approved drugs for the U.S. market. The U.S. market is worth up to $750 million a year to Canadian online pharmacies, who can charge less than half the U.S. price for many top-selling prescriptions, according to the Canadian International Pharmacy Association. Because drug prices are controlled by Canada’s government-run health care system, they’re generally a bargain for Americans. Foreign-based online sales account for a fraction of the $300 billion (U.S.) a year market for prescription drugs south of the border, but they’re an irritant to the powerful American pharmaceutical industry. Canada’s online pharmacies say they’re licensed operators who play an important role in the U.S. market serving millions of Americans, mainly seniors with chronic conditions who can’t afford the higher U.S. prices. The Winnipeg-based Canadian International Pharmacy Association maintains a list of members in good standing on its website. The list includes Canadadrugs.com. Any drugs sold in Canada must be approved by Health Canada, the association’s general manager Tim Smith told the Star in a telephone interview.
However, Smith acknowledged that Canadian internet pharmacies who sell outside Canada have partnered with pharmacies in other countries to sell drugs that have been approved by those countries’ regulators.
The fake Avastin appears to have travelled a circuitous route, possibly starting in China, and then zigzagging through Turkey and Egypt before being sold to Swiss and Danish wholesalers and then to Haughton’s U.K. wholesaler, River East Supplies Ltd., the Wall Street Journal reported.
River East then shipped the product to U.S. doctors through a Tennessee distributor, Haughton said.
The fake Avastin didn’t contain the drug’s active ingredient, bevacizumab, the FDA said. Investigators found the fake drug in 19 medical facilities, mostly in southern California.