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The majority of today’s cancer therapies differ little, in principle, from treatments developed during medicine’s pre-scientific days, when the practice of healing was more art than science. Back then, lacking specific therapies for diseases like syphilis or malaria, physicians treated patients with poisons, for example arsenic, in the hope that the poison would kill the disease faster than it killed the patient. For every apparently miraculous cure ten patients died and perhaps ten times as many became deathly ill without their disease improving. Quack cures persist to this day. Patients spend tens of thousands of dollars on magnets, potions, and various “remedies” that are as effective as medieval cures like bleeding and arsenic. For instance, cancer patients still travel to Mexico for the apricot-pit cancer “cure” laetrile, which contains high levels of cyanide. Every so often patients taking such remedies are cured because their cancer is poisoned faster than the rest of their body. These random, rare successes add to the mythology, while the hundreds or thousands of patients who wasted their money or were poisoned to death are quickly forgotten.
According to the World Health Organization, counterfeit medicines are a $32 billion global business and the Food and Drug Administration said it conducted 54 investigations last year -- almost double the number in 2005. The largest prescription drug recall in U.S. history occurred in 2003 after Pfizer discovered tens of thousands of bottles of counterfeit Lipitor, the top-selling cholesterol medicine. In the short time from discovery to recall, the fake medications had spread to 15 U.S. states. In addition to monitoring counterfeits, these organizations have to closely manage product expiration. The leading reason for the return of prescription drugs is due to products sitting in the supply chain too long and expiring before they can be dispensed. The Healthcare Distribution Management Association reports that the pharmaceutical industry incurs $2 billion a year in returns and product losses and incurs another $2 billion annually in the costs associated with processing returns, expirations and recalls.
