The study by LegitScript and KnujOn found that 80% of the sponsored pharmaceutical ads in Yahoo and Bing search results sold prescription drugs without a valid prescription. In some cases, the drugs were imported from India, which is a violation of U.S. law.

This even violates Yahoo’s own policy, which requires all Internet pharmacy advertisers to be based in the U.S. or Canada. But some Canadian advertisers that were approved by Yahoo imported the drugs from India, Singapore or Barbados.

In one case, a researcher ordered a drug without a prescription from a pharmacy advertised in Bing search results and received a counterfeit version of the drug.

The researchers also found that Microsoft was slow to respond to these violations of U.S. law. Shortly after the company vowed to take “immediate action … to remove any policy violators,” a researcher was able to buy a drug that is a controlled substance in some U.S. states from a Bing advertiser without a prescription.

KnujOn found that searchers who clicked an online pharmacy ad that appeared legitimate were sometimes redirected to an illegal Internet pharmacy.

“If the search engines continue to knowingly facilitate illegal prescription drug sales, then we’ll continue to issue these reports,” said KnujOn president Garth Bruen.

According to LegitScript’s web site, 98% of the online pharmacies in their database do not meet their standards for an Internet pharmacy (http://www.legitscript.com/standards). That’s 44,293 online pharmacies!

So before you order prescription drugs on the Internet, visit http://www.legitscript.com, enter the URL of the online pharmacy and click Validate. The company has 268 valid online pharmacies in its database, and 780 more are awaiting approval.

Sources:
http://www.pharmatimes.com/WorldNews/article.aspx?id=16473
http://www.legitscript.com
http://www.knujon.com/news.html

Copyright 2009, Ruth M. Shipley

SMR Information Solutions