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Short Paper
Availability of basic Drug Information to prospective buyers: A survey of Cyber pharmacies selling Sildenafil Citrate (Viagra™) Online.
Abstracts
The booming e-commerce has made available a large number of Prescription and Non-prescription based drugs available Online. Little has been studied on to what extent these websites provide basic drug information to consumers. Our study is based on Cyberpharmacies selling Sildenafil Citrate(Viagra) and availability of basic drug information like Active ingredients, strengths available,
Keywords
Internet, Drug, Commerce, Quality of Health Care,
Introduction:
The booming e-commerce and a regulation less environment online have led to the rise of a new generation of websites that market drugs and other products over the Internet. A large number of consumer products including drugs are being advertised and sold over the Internet including Sildenafil Citrate (Viagra®) [1]. Little is known on information these cyber pharmacies offer prospective buyers. This study is aimed at assessing the extent to which basic drug information is provided to prospective consumers who visit the website before actually buying the drug.
Main Outcome Measures:
To assess the availability of basic drug information like Active Drug Ingredient(s), Strengths of drug available, mode of action and Indication.
Material And Methods:
In March 2003, we searched the web using Copernic Agent Basic Version 6.01[2], which searched 17 search engines simultaneously. The search was conducted using the term "Viagra" setting the maximum results per search engine as 300. The first one hundred Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) sorted according to the relevance score were visited and the number of websites actually selling Viagra through their websites were analysed. The information was compared with that offered by the company that manufactured the drug [3] and at the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) listing [4].
Results:
We retrieved information regarding 1180 top ranking URLs.
Of the top one hundred URLs by score included in the study, we could visit only 83 URLs. The websites that provided only links to other cyber pharmacies, without actually selling the drug on were excluded from the analysis. Dead links were revisited after a week and still inaccessible URLs were excluded from the study .We retrieved a total of 43 websites that actually sold the drug on their websites. The URLs which entirely redirected to another website automatically [doorway URLs] were analysed as if it was the original website and the score was applied to that website.
Four websites gave no consumer information while one provided information by linking to the FDA website and the Pfizer website for consumer information.
Of the websites analysed, 14 of them mentioned that the active ingredient was Sildenafil Citrate, and 17 mentioned the strengths available. 23 websites described the mode of action and 32 mentioned the drug was used for treating erectile dysfunction.
Discussion:
The main outcome of this study is that we found that though most of the Cyber pharmacies provided consumer information, the information provided was often incomplete. The study rightly substantiates the need to be cautious while buying drugs over the Internet [5].
The poor quality of consumer information is often reflected in the fact that most websites, which sell the drug, have no motive other than create profit [6]. A great proportion of websites that offered only links, meaning they were affiliates or doorway URLs of bigger websites.
The finding that 30% of cyber pharmacies offered to sell Viagra in contraindicated cases [6] shows that the practice of selling drugs over the Internet is turning highly unethical [7]
Future legislation and Quality control measures are to be sought on a global scale to curb the menace potential adversities of selling drugs over the Internet.
We hope that this paper would motivate further thoughts and research in this direction.
List of Abbreviations Used:
URLs: Uniform resource Locators
FDA: Federal Drug Administration, United States of America.
Acknowledgements:
The author acknowledges his colleagues especially Dr Manu Bhaskar for their support and opinion they rendered in my study.
References:
[1] Stolberg SG Official Struggle to Regulate On-Line Sale of Prescription Drugs, New York Times, Jul. 31, 1999
[2] Copernic Basic Agent ver 6.01 downloaded from URL http://www.copernic.com on March 01 2003
[3] Viagra.Com website URL:
http://www.viagra.com/consumer/general/commonQuestions.asp Accessed on
April 03 2003
[4]US Food and Drug Administration - Viagra Consumer Information.URL:
www.fda.gov/cder/consumerinfo/druginfo/Viagra.htm Accessed on March 20,2003
[5] Medical products and the Internet A guide to finding reliable information World
Health Organization Geneva Document WHO/EDM/QSM/99.4 1999
Also available online at URL: http://www.who.int/medicines/library/qsm/who-edm-qsm-99-4/medicines-oninternet-guide.html Accessed on April 03 2003
[6] Eysenbach G. Online Prescribing of Sildanefil (Viagra®) on the World Wide
Web. Journal of Medical Internet Research 1999;1(2):e10
Also available online at URL: http://www.jmir.org/1999/2/e10/
[7] Scaria V. Cyber pharmacies and Ethical concerns over marketing drugs Online. Eubios Asian Journal of Asian and International Bioethics [in press]
Competing Interests: None
Source of Funding: None
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