FDA offers up another reason not to buy from spammers

February 21, 2007 | By Andy Merrett | Filed Under Ethics

I’ve made it a rule never to buy from anyone who peddles their products and services by way of any form of spam or unsolicited junk mail, and I’m sure many others feel the same - particularly those plagued by the stuff swamping our email inbox and blog/forum moderation queues.

Now the US Food and Drug Administration has offered a more serious reason not to buy drug products from these rogue traders:

A number of Americans who placed orders for specific drug products over the Internet (Ambien, Xanax, Lexapro, and Ativan), instead received a product that … can cause muscle stiffness and spasms, agitation, and sedation … Preliminary analysis indicates they contain haloperidol, the active ingredient in a prescription drug used primarily to treat schizophrenia.

Leaving aside distasteful jokes about stiffness, this is worrying stuff, and food for thought if you’ve ever been even slightly tempted to plonk your credit card details down at that rather shabby looking temporary website.

Saving a few dollars not only encourages the lousy spammers to continue bombarding us all with obscene and misleading messages, but could lead to serious health problems due to being sold bad medicine.

Found via Richi Jennings, whose post features pictures of genuine and conterfeit drugs

About the author: Andy Merrett has worked in a variety of commercial and not-for-profit organisations in both administrative and technical roles, including web and database development, systems analysis and programming. He is now a full-time professional blogger, writing on a variety of subjects including consumer technology, the Internet, music, and society. He currently works on a number of Shiny Media titles including Tech Digest, HDTVUK, and iPhonic, and other projects including Piano & Synth and Family Relationships. He is a prolific Facebook user. Andy lives in London, England.

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