Fake Chinese antimalarials sold in Nigeria with "Made in India" lable

There's a whole geopolitical story lurking here: Indian trade reps sending stern diplomatic letters to the Chinese embassy over fake drug sales in Nigeria:

Last week, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) of Nigeria issued a press release stating that a large consignment of fake anti-malarial generic pharmaceuticals labelled `Made in India' were, in fact, found to have been produced in China.
New Delhi has registered ``strong protest'' with the Chinese mission and China's foreign trade ministry, according to sources in the commerce ministry.

Chinese passing off fake drugs as 'Made in India'

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Lobster

#5, Nigerians also murder albinos to make lucky charms and rape little girls to “cure” HIV.

Not always so funny.
urederra

Yeah, It would be nice to have an HPLC at home. Specially one of those coupled with a mass spectrometer.

Geeezzz… Do you bother to find out how much does it cost a gallon of HPLC grade acetonitrile? $40 minimun.
Anonymous

Yea… this is incredibly common in West Africa… I remember sitting on a bus in Cameroon, listening to a guy pitching “shiny shiny” tooth powder and telling us it was made in the USA. He went on to say that all Americans sleep only 3 hours a night, sometimes going many days without sleep. Good times.
GuidoDavid

I really cannot believe my eyes.

“Nigerians being conned is always funny when you read about it on the internet.”

Isn’t that like saying that Americans are funny to watch falling from building on fire, as they killed a lot of Arabs?

What a damn jerk.
GuidoDavid

Lobster:
I have never, ever read about Albino murders in Nigeria. Can you post a link? Tanzania is very far away from Nigeria, you know, Africa is a big place. Even more when you do not have cheap flights available with RyanAir or Southwest.

And even so, if some Nigerians did those things, it would be some Nigerians, not all of them.

Is it that difficult to think in terms of people and not nationalities?
Moriarty

Only people who live in countries with no dishonest citizens deserve not to be sold fake medicine.
Snig

Thanks Takuan,
nice to see someone out there is living the dream. Even if I had the skills to make one, convincing my wife it was worthwhile taking up space would be similar in magnitude for me to convince her I needed a live-in girlfriend or a pet pony.
zuzu

I think a home HPLC would be uber-cool, but my wife won’t even let me talk about housing my own electron microscope.

For home use, or even a shared facility like a laundromat, I imagine the comparison would be closer to other large appliances: refrigerator, washer, dryer, washing machine, water heater, etc.

Or, perhaps like a laser printer. Some people have a networked color laser printer at home. Other people rely on shared printer workstations at Kinkos or AlphaGraphics.

Geeezzz… Do you bother to find out how much does it cost a gallon of HPLC grade acetonitrile? $40 minimun.

Prices will drop as demand increases. Niche products always seem expensive, at first. Think of the microwave oven.

Or, look at the price history of the television set, or in recent history: HDTV.

An HDTV used to cost at least $5000 ten years ago, now they can be had for $500 — an order of magnitude less expensive.

Also, alternatives, substitutes, and innovations will be discovered, further aiding in pushing down prices so that producers can increase sales to meet consumer demand.
GuidoDavid

Shall we move to Rivendel?
Takuan

Tanzania, not Nigeria

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/crackdown-on-witchdoctors-after-albinos-killed-to-harvest-body-parts-804545.html
Takuan

South Africa, not Nigeria

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/444213
zuzu

How do we go about convincing Dean Kamen / DEKA to work on making an inexpensive and easy to use HPLC?

(Didn’t that guy invent a device that generates electricity by making any water source potable?)
GuidoDavid

Come on, Takuan, all those names are funny. You cannot blame people if they cannot manage such complexity.
Takuan

http://www.rebirth.co.za/images/Map_of_Africa.jpg
Takuan

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artapr01/rhtem.html
bolamig

Put this one in the time capsule, open in a decade or two, and we’ll all laugh while our new overlords get rid of the last of the cattle farms.
mdh

Honorable Sirs, I am in receipt of an internet communique from the wealthy widow of the former head of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control of Nigeria seeking to transfers funds….

It is is a shame, but not exactly groundbreaking news.
Snig

Benefits of home electron microscope:

Can do forensics on medicines(crystal/powder shape and size, and conterfeit pills that look similar by naked eye would look quite different under magnification).

Counterfeit bills could be detected.

Examine your kids throat cultures to assess strains involved.

Hybridize “your” kid’s DNA with yours to see if he really is your kid.

Identify and fix bad sectors on your hard drive.

Centrifuge down and image the precipitate in milk and orange juice to see if it’s still good to drink.

You can image representational cross sections of your food to avoid salmonella and botulism.

1001 house hold uses.
novakreo

Lable?
Takuan

what IS availble these days for a hobby electron microscope?
mattofdoom

This is no laughing matter.

Putting the whole ‘made in India’ part of the story aside, there is a big fuss being made about these fake Chinese antimalarials at the moment.

Apparently, they tend to contain trace amounts of the latest and greatest antimalarial drug, not nearly enough to kill the malaria, but great for breeding resistant strains. It’s a big problem already in Cambodia.

There’s been a fair bit of noise about it on the BBC World Service. Every report ends along the lines of “This is bad news for SE Asia, but we really need to make sure this resistance doesn’t spread to Sub-Saharan Africa”.
mdh

This is no laughing matter.

Nigerians being conned is always funny when you read about it on the internet.

And even if you disagree with that, people getting what they pay for is always funny when you read about it on the internet.
HotPepperMan

MDH – Great – Until, like me, you are dependent upon this for your health, safety, and ability to make an income.

Likewise, in any society there is a percentage of people who are bad. They make their living from ripping off people. In this specific case it is peoples lives that are at stake. I suggest a dose of ‘growing up’ or ‘get a life’ vaccine for yourself. I take it you do not know anyone who has suffered with malaria or similar insect borne infections and live in a relatively comfortable environment yourself?

I do not wish to appear rude but this is a really nasty aspect of globalisation. Similarly, you need to remember the melamine deaths and the drywall problems from scam artists in China.
rebdav

Is this just a scam to sell fake drugs and a way to divert responsibility, or was it a way to sway Nigerian opinion against India. China has been making inroads in Africa for over 30 years they have done a descent job picking up the slack from the Soviets and Cubans. So for something as important as antimalarials I suspect at least the possibility of a strategic economic plot. That said it is amazing that China can manage to have a foreign policy, outside of the Chinese military everything is quite decentralized.
cosanostradamus

.
The really scary part: How do you know where YOUR medicines are coming from?

Answer: You don’t. Many ingredients and even whole compounds are coming from China these days, without being labeled as such on the final package, same as with food ingredients. Hey, it’s just cheaper. Not that they’d ever pass the savings along to you. You’re just a guinea pig.

But there’s other news of a weird, unnatural sort.
.
Takuan

these things have to presented in relative terms: “Honey! can I build an electron microscope in the living room or can I get a live-in girlfriend?”
wizardofplum

Time was,when Chinese Junk referred to a very sea
worthy vessel.Today it represents the shoddy
manufacturing standards of Chinese mass production
But,bless ‘em,they have learned well the mantra of
U.S. consumer strategy-planned obsolesence.Couple
that with their adoption of ‘Enron Ethics’in the
pharmaceutical and food industries and you have
the metaphorical rope that Kruschev alluded to in
the 60′s.
mattofdoom

#7, REBDAV: Interesting question.

I personally suspect that this is likely to be Chinese factories copying exactly the branding and packaging of a genuine antimalarial product without fully considering the words they are copying, rather than a cunning plot to embarrass the Indians.

Two points to all those who are thinking: “Haha! Nigerians dieing of Malaria! That’ll teach those scammers”

1) Not every Nigerian is a scammer. There’s millions of them, you know!

In fact, I reckon that the segment of the population with access to the Internet (and therefore able to try a hand at scamming) is totally different to the segment of the population unable to afford proper mosquito netting or genuine drugs.

2) Even if the entire Nigerian Population was somehow guilty of scamming your granny, Treatment-resistant Malaria, like scams or fake pharmaceuticals, pays no attention to boarders.
mdh

guidodavid, et al.

chill out. I will not apologize for having a chuckle at nobodies expense.
gtron

I’m not anti-Chinese, but the potential nasty coming out of that huge population is only just starting to show itself
i hope its not tiresome that I suggest a viewing of this 15 min film made by an American:
http://www.atom.com/funny_videos/haha_america/
mdh

You do not have to apologize,

not to you, ya concern-troll jack-of-fail-tirades.
mattofdoom

#5, MDH:

…people getting what they pay for is always funny when you read about it on the internet.

Incredibly poor people buying all they can afford, in a desperate struggle against a life-threatening illness (West-African malaria is NASTY), and inadvertently helping the rise of an even-more life-threatening illness isn’t funny. Not even when you read about it on the Internet.
zuzu

You don’t. Many ingredients and even whole compounds are coming from China these days, without being labeled as such on the final package, same as with food ingredients. Hey, it’s just cheaper. Not that they’d ever pass the savings along to you. You’re just a guinea pig.

Yes, if only we had some sort of invention that could separate the components of what’s in something and identify them for you…

except that we do; the entire field of chromatography, but specifically high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).

The problem with relying on the subsidization of a central authority — the FDA — for so long, is that the distributed public at large has atrophied their ability for caveat emptor.

You just assume that drugs and food people are trying to sell you are safe. They’re not. Even approved food and drugs aren’t safe.

(Not to mention people who die from precluded access to unapproved drugs.)

You can’t trust the FDA or the USDA, let alone Chinese manufacturing, but science you can trust.

The DIYbio community needs to invent and offer affordable “prosumer” HPLC equipment so that people can analyse their food and drugs at home themselves, using open-source software and open access assay curves.
GuidoDavid

Sure. Do not worry for laughing and getting a kick of innocent people suffering and being abused, neglected and duped. You do not have to apologize, it is part of freedom of speech and you are in your right to show the kind of despicable human being you are.
Snig

“what IS availble these days for a hobby electron microscope?”

To my knowledge, unrequited longing and the memory of being gobsmacked while seeing the world at 40,000 times magnification. Could probably get an old ultramicrotome and practice making glass knives to keep the skills sharp.
Snig

Zuzu
Googled “cheap hplc”, and the second hit was from a Chinese manufacturer…

I think a home HPLC would be uber-cool, but my wife won’t even let me talk about housing my own electron microscope.

It would be cool to have them in high schools, it could be run 24/7 to sample the local water/food stuffs and decipher the precise constituents of cafeteria food. It’d be a great way to get kids some hands-on science.

A pharmacologist friend was watching a documentary on a South American tribe that had a hollowed out tree branch, filled with leaves and branches and rocks. They were chewing up leaves, spitting them in the top, and then pouring hot water in. They then drank the stuff that came out the bottom for hallucinogenic effect. He pointed out it was essentially a HPLC column. OK, not HP, but principle was the same.
Takuan

there are other uses for the energy of an angry young man. Especially two of them.