Home > US Grabs 81-Year-Old’s Lipitor Sent Via Canada

US Grabs 81-Year-Old’s Lipitor Sent Via Canada

by Open-Publishing - Monday 14 February 2005
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Health USA Canada-Québec

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US Grabs 81-Year-Old’s Lipitor Sent Via Canada
The Capital Times
Monday, February 07, 2005

Milwaukee(AP) - Charles Netzow is upset that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has confiscated a drug that was being mailed to him from a pharmacy in Canada to help keep his cholesterol under control.

"I’m angry because it’s nonsense," the 81-year-old suburban Fox Point man told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after receiving a notice from the FDA indicating that his 90 tablets of Lipitor were confiscated by its Chicago office because the drug was an "unapproved new drug."

The agency defined unapproved as including any drug made in another country and imported to the United States, or any drug made in the United States that is exported to another country and reimported into the United States, but did not comment specifically on the Netzow case.

Canadian "drugs are not FDA-approved, so it’s a violation of federal law," Tom McGinnis, director of FDA pharmacy affairs, told the newspaper. "It’s really hard to say what the pedigree is."

Barney Britton, president of Minit Drugs, the Calgary pharmacy that has been selling Lipitor to Netzow, said Lipitor sold in all of North America is made at a single plant in Ireland.

Britton said Minit has about 2,300 regular customers in Wisconsin and about 5,700 in Illinois. In December and January, the FDA confiscated 50 packages out of the Chicago office, which serves both Illinois and Wisconsin, he said.

Wisconsin residents have been able to buy drugs from Canada since last February as part of a Web-based program set up by the state.

Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, an advocate of access to cheaper online Canadian pharmacies, said he had no doubt that the drugs Netzow has been getting are the same drugs sold in the United States.

Doyle said he believed the FDA was confiscating drugs because of pressure from drug companies.

"The Bush administration has really put pressure on Canada to shut this down," Doyle told the Journal Sentinel. "The real question for the FDA and the Bush administration is, why don’t you get on the side of the people?"

Bryant Haskins is a spokesman for Pfizer, which makes Lipitor. He told the newspaper that the Pfizer plant in Ireland makes Lipitor for the United States and Canada, and said he believed a plant in Puerto Rico also supplies some Lipitor to the United States.

Haskins denied that Pfizer pressures the FDA to confiscate drugs coming into the United States from Canada.

Forum posts

  • Really sorry to hear this happened to you. I wish I could help. Actually I wish I could help everybody. Get rid of Bush and maybe we can start helping each other again...for real man. But first just redo the vote and that would get rid of him..pretty sure the real vote tally would be 6 out of every 10 going against him. Bush is the devil and doesn’t care about your cholesterol just the money involved to be made duhh.