Spam Nation by Brian Krebs
Authors: Brian Krebs
Tags: Political Science, Business & Economics, Industries, Computers & Information Technology, Security (National & International), Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology
Ads: Link
a pill or two from the packages they’d received, but only one interviewee actually followed through. That package contained both knockoff Viagra and another drug that were in the same bag and got crushed together and badly contaminated.
So while I’d gotten some good information on why people were ordering these drugs and perpetuating the spam problem, I decided that to make sense of the GlavMed and Rx-Promotion affiliate and client data, I needed help from Warner and several other prominent academic researchers with the capability and facilities to test these drugs. What I didn’t know at the time was that these researchers had been trying to discover the same thing on their own, only to be stymied by miles of red tape and the pharmaceutical industry itself. I was also about to discover the much darker, more sinister consequences of these online drug buyers’ choices.
----
8. Again, while leaked ChronoPay emails show otherwise, Vrublevsky denies co-owning Rx-Promotion, but admits that ChronoPay did process payments for the pharmacy program. Gusev has publicly denied running SpamIt, but again, the evidence suggests otherwise.
Chapter 5
RUSSIAN ROULETTE
Less than twenty-four hours after Christmas 2006, Marcia Bergeron succumbed to poisons mixed into several medications she had ordered from a supposedly Canadian pharmacy online. Her body was discovered by a neighbor, and more than a hundred generic pills were found in her home, including a sedative, an anti-anxiety drug, and acetaminophen.
Bergeron, a fifty-seven-year-old resident of Quadra Island in British Columbia, Canada, had started losing her hair and experienced blurred vision in the days before her death. According to the coroner’s report, “Mrs. Bergeron had been suffering from a range of symptoms. In emails to a friend, she described symptoms of ongoing nausea, diarrhea, aching joints, and other issues. Her friends locally were aware she was losing her hair and having vision problems. In the days immediately prior to her death, she was extremely fatigued and sick.”
An autopsy report showed that Bergeron had been slowly poisoned by extremely hazardous chemicals included in the pills, which the Coroners Service of British Columbia said were ordered from an online pharmacy.
Toxicology tests indicated that many of the pills contained dangerously high levels of heavy metals that had probably been used as filleror were trace elements from a contaminated production facility. Among the chemicals included in the pills were uranium and lead, both of which can be lethal or severely damaging even in small doses.
It remains unclear which rogue Internet pharmacy program sponsored the site from which Bergeron ordered. Drugs purchased by GlavMed and other rogue pharmacy partnerships are marketed as if they come from pharmacies in Canada, which is world-renowned for its affordable medications. But most of the drugs from GlavMed appear to have been shipped from a half-dozen pharmacies or suppliers in India, a nation that is also now among the world’s largest sources of legitimate branded and generic medications. The rest seem to have come from more than forty manufacturers and suppliers in China, India, and Pakistan, some of whom appeared to resell legitimate, branded drugs at bargain basement prices and some who didn’t. The one that Bergeron used clearly didn’t.
India has the brains, manpower, and infrastructure to manufacture huge quantities of pills each year, and it has fostered a booming, $10 billion-a-year pharmaceutical industry even though the country has routinely denied the patents for many drugs made by Western drugmakers.
As Vikas Bajaj and Andrew Pollack wrote for the New York Times in March 2012, India’s conflict with Western drug companies over patents dates back to 1970, when the country stopped granting drug patents. It resumed granting them in 2005 as part of an agreement with the World Trade Organization, but the agreement was not
So while I’d gotten some good information on why people were ordering these drugs and perpetuating the spam problem, I decided that to make sense of the GlavMed and Rx-Promotion affiliate and client data, I needed help from Warner and several other prominent academic researchers with the capability and facilities to test these drugs. What I didn’t know at the time was that these researchers had been trying to discover the same thing on their own, only to be stymied by miles of red tape and the pharmaceutical industry itself. I was also about to discover the much darker, more sinister consequences of these online drug buyers’ choices.
----
8. Again, while leaked ChronoPay emails show otherwise, Vrublevsky denies co-owning Rx-Promotion, but admits that ChronoPay did process payments for the pharmacy program. Gusev has publicly denied running SpamIt, but again, the evidence suggests otherwise.
Chapter 5
RUSSIAN ROULETTE
Less than twenty-four hours after Christmas 2006, Marcia Bergeron succumbed to poisons mixed into several medications she had ordered from a supposedly Canadian pharmacy online. Her body was discovered by a neighbor, and more than a hundred generic pills were found in her home, including a sedative, an anti-anxiety drug, and acetaminophen.
Bergeron, a fifty-seven-year-old resident of Quadra Island in British Columbia, Canada, had started losing her hair and experienced blurred vision in the days before her death. According to the coroner’s report, “Mrs. Bergeron had been suffering from a range of symptoms. In emails to a friend, she described symptoms of ongoing nausea, diarrhea, aching joints, and other issues. Her friends locally were aware she was losing her hair and having vision problems. In the days immediately prior to her death, she was extremely fatigued and sick.”
An autopsy report showed that Bergeron had been slowly poisoned by extremely hazardous chemicals included in the pills, which the Coroners Service of British Columbia said were ordered from an online pharmacy.
Toxicology tests indicated that many of the pills contained dangerously high levels of heavy metals that had probably been used as filleror were trace elements from a contaminated production facility. Among the chemicals included in the pills were uranium and lead, both of which can be lethal or severely damaging even in small doses.
It remains unclear which rogue Internet pharmacy program sponsored the site from which Bergeron ordered. Drugs purchased by GlavMed and other rogue pharmacy partnerships are marketed as if they come from pharmacies in Canada, which is world-renowned for its affordable medications. But most of the drugs from GlavMed appear to have been shipped from a half-dozen pharmacies or suppliers in India, a nation that is also now among the world’s largest sources of legitimate branded and generic medications. The rest seem to have come from more than forty manufacturers and suppliers in China, India, and Pakistan, some of whom appeared to resell legitimate, branded drugs at bargain basement prices and some who didn’t. The one that Bergeron used clearly didn’t.
India has the brains, manpower, and infrastructure to manufacture huge quantities of pills each year, and it has fostered a booming, $10 billion-a-year pharmaceutical industry even though the country has routinely denied the patents for many drugs made by Western drugmakers.
As Vikas Bajaj and Andrew Pollack wrote for the New York Times in March 2012, India’s conflict with Western drug companies over patents dates back to 1970, when the country stopped granting drug patents. It resumed granting them in 2005 as part of an agreement with the World Trade Organization, but the agreement was not
Similar Books
