With the advent of the internet and its wide range of uses in several fields, it isn’t surprising that the normal over-the-counter medicine has become an option now that prescription medicine is made available over the internet. However, along with the comfort of obtaining medication from the comfort of your own home comes the risk of buying fake medicine, especially of the erectile dysfunction variety.
With an estimate putting figures of sales at $75 million in 2010, this means that twice the amount of sales have been made over the past five years. In addition to counter this problem, several steps have been taken to make arrests as well as seize counterfeit drugs that have been sold to the detriment of their customers for a while now.
However, it is alarming to note that medication is not just limited to drugs such as Viagra, which can be embarrassing to obtain at a drugstore for most men or while consulting a doctor, but extend to serious illnesses that might turn out to be fatal if the drugs obtained are contaminated.
Since one does not need to have the approval of a competent healthcare professional, it isn’t possible for the patient to check if the drugs used are pure or completely unsafe for consumption apart from the fact that it might work.
Dr. Margaret E. Wierman, professor of medicine at the University of Colorado at Denver and chief of endocrinology at the Denver VA Medical Center, sums it up rather grimly by saying, “You may be wasting your money or you may actually be hurting yourself,”