Pharmacy certification scheme undermined by fake logo

A rogue Internet pharmacy operating out of Russia has been found using a fake logo claiming it was accredited by the Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union (PGEU), illustrating the difficulties in policing the online trade in medicines.

It also raises questions about the value of mandating a community-wide logo for legitimate Internet pharmacy sites, as proposed by the European Parliament's ENVI committee in its amendments to the falsified medicines directive currently being developed in the EU.

The PGEU said today that a website selling medicines online - the Canadian Neighbor Pharmacy (www.cancarepharmacy.com) sported a PGEU certification logo and claimed that "all drugs sold ... are considered to be approved by PGEU."

The website - since taken down - also claimed certification by four other pharmacy bodies based in North America.

"By clicking on the ... logo at the bottom of the page, any potential customer would be redirected to a certificate 'issued' by PGEU," said the pharmacy group (see accompanying image).

PGEU maintains that the ease with which certification can itself be counterfeited exposes the limitations of such systems and shows that if they are to be implemented they need to be extremely robust.

The organisation's secretary general, John Chave, said: "Our experience shows that we run the risk of creating a false sense of security if counterfeiting certification is so easy."

"We should not put patients in the position of having to discriminate between fake and real certification", he continued, adding: "we need to explore technological options which put certification beyond the counterfeiters."


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