The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a stern warning today, alerting consumers to the “dangers associated with buying prescription drugs over the Internet.” The impetus for this latest warning is the discovery that two dozen related websites may be involved in the distribution of counterfeit prescription drugs.

“On three occasions during recent months,” says the alert, “FDA received information that counterfeit versions of Xenical 120 mg capsules, a drug manufactured by Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. (Roche), were obtained by three consumers from two different Web sites. Xenical is an FDA-approved drug used to help obese individuals who meet certain weight and height requirements lose weight and maintain weight loss.
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Last week, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) revealed that a whopping 94 percent of physicians in the United States have some type of relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. The authors of the study found that the level of industry contact varies with regard to doctors’ specialties, practice types, and professional activities. Their findings suggested that “industry may focus marketing efforts on physicians who are perceived as influencing the prescribing behaviors of other physicians.”

The national survey was led by Dr. Eric Campbell of the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital and involved more than 3,000 doctors from six specialties: anesthesiology, cardiology, family practice, general surgery, internal medicine, and pediatrics. (About 1,600 of the doctors surveyed returned their questionnaires.) Campbell’s group concluded that “the high prevalence of physician–industry relationships underscores the need to consider their implications carefully.” The researchers also highlighted the need for “guidelines and recommendations that are specific to the context of each specialty and setting.”
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According to a new study by the U.S. Department of Justice, black and Hispanic drivers are far more likely to be searched and arrested following a traffic stop than white drivers. The same report also indicated that police are more likely to use force against blacks and Hispanics.

The report, called “Contacts between Police and the Public, 2005,” was conducted by the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. The study says that nearly 18 million drivers had direct contact with police after traffic stops in 2005, or almost 9 percent of all drivers in the United States. Of that total number of traffic stops, about 5 percent resulted in subsequent vehicle searches. The report found that 9.5 percent of blacks and 8.8 percent of Hispanics who were pulled over faced searches, compared to only 3.6 percent of white motorists who were stopped. (More that 40 percent of these searches were conducted without the driver’s consent.) In addition, 4.5 percent of black motorists and 3.1 percent of Hispanic drivers were subsequently arrested after traffic stops, compared with only 2.1 percent of white drivers.
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Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine delivered on last week’s promise to close a significant loophole in the state’s gun-buying process. Kaine today issued an executive order that would require all persons who have been directed to receive involuntary mental-health treatment to be added to the background-check database used by gun retailers.

According to Gov. Kaine, his new order would have prevented Seung Hui Cho from purchasing the guns he used earlier this month in the tragic Virginia Tech shooting rampage. The key element of the order is that it does not distinguish between inpatient and outpatient mental-health care. Before Kaine’s order, only individuals who had been ordered to undergo inpatient care in other words, only people who’d been committed were added to the database.
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