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Download China's food and drug authority has issued another warning about overseas drugs sold online, saying that 75 percent of such drugs are counterfeit. The China Food and Drug Administration said in an online statement on Wednesday that the authenticity of generic anti-cancer drugs sold online cannot have their authenticity and quality guaranteed. The authority cited an investigation by the drug administration of Shenzhen that said that 75 percent of foreign generic anti-cancer drugs supplied by online agents are fake and ineffective. Zhi Xiuyi, head of the Lung Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Center of the Capital Medical University in Beijing, said Chinese cancer patients turn to online agents mainly for cheap generic drugs and foreign new drugs have not yet been approved in China. "Due to the high cost of developing new drugs and getting patents, many newly developed drugs are very expensive. Yet such drugs are included in the medical insurance systems of the EU and the US," he said. "Many patients turn to online agents for those drugs because the drugs are too expensive in the domestic market or they are not yet available in the overseas market," he said. As for generic drugs, most that are sold online are imported from India, he said. Cancer treatments like Gleevec, which typically cost more than 10,000 yuan ($1,600) a month, are not covered by the medical insurance system, while the cost for the generic treatments is only about 1,000 yuan a month. | 
