Source: THOMAS FULLER, The New York Times,: July 20, 2009"Three years ago, the World Health Organization estimated that as many as one in four pharmaceutical drugs sold in the developing world were counterfeit." As part of the effort to reduce the traffic in fake drugs "an informal group of researchers and government officials spanning Africa, Asia and the United States who have teamed up with Interpol, the international police agency, to use cutting-edge technology in tracking fake drugs that claim to treat malaria."
One of the tools of this network is a mass spectrometer with an added ion gun "which emits a jet of helium gas and captures a minute amount of the material, instantly identifying its component parts." The device, created in the lab of Facundo Fernández at George Tech, can check the chemical composition of hundreds of pills a day.
Others in the network are using forensic science to identify the sources of the counterfeit products in the hope that police powers can be used to interrupt or at least diminish the flow of counterfeits.
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