As if cancer patients don't have enough to worry about, the Food & Drug Administration is now warning they may be at risk for being given counterfeit medication.

An increasing number of medical malpractice claims in Manhattan and elsewhere in the country stem from dangerous pharmaceutical claims. We have detailed many of those issues here as the system continues to rely upon the same pharmaceutical companies who are making billions of dollars off each new drug, to certify that those drugs are safe for consumption. The FDA has been accused of playing politics with the approval process. And, even when the government agency is doing the best it can, it relies upon studies produced by the drug companies to prove a drug is safe and effective.

Now there are reports that a phony cancer drug had been in use and on the market for nearly a year before the federal government issued a warning.

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Our Manhattan medical malpractice attorneys believe this is an outrageous example of what can happen when doctors, hospitals and government agencies don't take the proper steps to ensure patients are receiving proper care.

According to Reuters New York, a company had been selling fake bottles of Avastin, a widely-used cancer drug, for some time. Last July, a number of doctor's offices had voiced some concerns about the drug. But it wasn't until just this month that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration formally notified nearly 20 cancer practices that they had been buying the drug from a supplier who hadn't been approved by the government. This included the fake version of the drug, which didn't contain bevacizumab, the ingredient that makes the medicine effective. More offices could have been affected as well. This means that hundreds and potentially thousands of cancer patients weren't getting the medicine they needed for an extended period of time.

The FDA has said it's not clear yet whether any patient has been harmed as a result of this disaster. It would be difficult for us to imagine a scenario in which no one was hurt by this.

An FDA spokeswoman said the fiasco underscores the need for clinics to be diligent in determining where their medicines are coming from. They need to make sure they are coming from sources that are licensed in the U.S. The agency did not address its six-month delay in issuing the warning.

In this case, the fake Avastin came from an overseas supplier who distributed the drugs through a company in Montana. The drugs were in turn passed out to patients in California, Chicago and Texas.

One California doctor's office told a reporter that the office there stopped purchasing the drug from that company in July, when someone realized the drugs didn't have a national health code on the label, which is necessary for billing purposes. Thank goodness for billing vigilance.

But it was still months before the federal government issued their warning. In the meantime, cancer patients were spending precious time, energy and money on a drug that was essentially worthless.

This all comes amid ongoing reports of drug shortages and investigations into whether large drug companies are creating artificial shortages to drive up the price of certain drugs.