The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to allow re-importation of cheap generic medicines from Europe and Canada into the U.S. Since then the U.S.-based pharmaceutical industry has been
frantically trying to explain the consequences of this action to the American public in the hope that the Senate will not support the legislation. Indeed, 53 Senators have already signed a letter indicating they will not support re-importation.

Parallel import of pharmaceuticals means significant savings at the benefit of patients as well as the National Health Service. But these savings can also cause a lot of damage.

Right now there are companies offering medicines on the Internet that are imported from other countries that don’t have the same taxes. What’s wrong with that, you might ask. These Internet distributors distribute these pharmaceuticals without a medical prescription. They import and offer these drugs to their customers without them ever seeing a doctor. Besides the fact that these drugs might be counterfeit, as is often the case, taking prescription drugs without a doctor’s advice can be very dangerous.

Some of these companies solve this problem by contacting a doctor in the country the drugs are coming from and have him make a prescription. This is illegal as a patient has to have a physical examination before a doctor can write out a prescription drug.

Besides the danger to the public health, the repackaging and parallel import of drugs is illegal in many instances. It constitutes an infringement on the trademark rights of the manufacturers. And in most cases these “parallel imports” are counterfeit drugs from Asian or African countries that only contain a minute amount of the active ingredient.

Pretection can detect all online sales of drugs, including those that are too cheap or don’t have the right packaging, a.k.a. fake or illegal repackaged drugs. Pretection Online Monitoring Service will help companies that are suffering from parallel import fight these problems and prevent a great loss in revenues, serious damage to the brand and help build consumer confidence.