Online Pharmacies

Online Pharmacies
Online Pharmacies: A Mouse Click that Leads to a Health Risk

One click through the internet could cost us our health by getting online prescriptions and pharmaceuticals. An online prescription is an online questionnaire provided by physicians, and once patients answer the questionnaire, they can get their official prescription without even going to see a doctor. Online pharmacies also have some advantages and some disadvantages; they could save us a lot of time as well as a lot of money. The institution of National health Academies reported that 1.5 million medical errors occur annually in the United States (Zielski). Between those errors, there are 44,000 to 98,000 victims of those errors are being killed, and one of the reasons is the unclear handwriting prescriptions (Chartan). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also reported a graph showing that electronic prescriptions have 34 percent of prescribing errors, and ten percent of technical errors (Negative Features). Prescribing errors occur when interpreting the message sent by the patient while answering the questionnaire. Even though online pharmacies have some advantages such as online prescriptions, which prevent unclear handwriting prescription, but the risk of medical errors is higher, since there is no oral communication between the patients and physicians, and the possibility of ordering online pharmaceuticals. Therefore, online pharmacies should be regulated to prevent any possible errors might occur to give a better quality of health for patients.
People may think there would be no different between ordering from online pharmacies since they can get their drugs and prescriptions in either way. In addition, the internet can save people’s money such paying the hospital for every visit, and on-line pharmacies are less expensive than going to physical pharmacies. For example, according to a survey made by Wall Street Journal, in Canada the medicine is less expensive, and 80 percent of people would rather import their medicine from other countries than the United States (Eighty percent). Ordering online will make it easy for people to import pharmaceuticals out of the States.
Although it is true that people can shop online and get less expensive drugs than the drugs they buy from pharmacies, some online pharmacies are reliable, while others are not. It is very hard to distinguish between the reliable and unreliable ones. For example, if one wants to buy medicine online, the first thing one does is to use a search engine, such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. There would be many online pharmacies. Unfortunately, it is hard to distinguish between the legal and illegal pharmacies because the search engine will only search the words not by how reliable the pharmacy would be. Some consumers are unable to distinguish between reputable on-line pharmacies and illicit ones, and they might buy medicine illegally. Illegal medicines are not tested by the Food and Drug Administration and they might be very harmful to our health, and eventually costing us more than we have saved from buying online.
Some on-line pharmacies advertise on popular websites such as Yahoo, giving consumers more confidence to buy from those pharmacies. Since yahoo is one of the popular websites, people will trust buying from those pharmacies once they advertise on such websites. Even though Yahoo has a policy regarding pharmacies, there are still ways to violate the law directly and indirectly. For example, Yahoo limits advertising pharmacies to only for those shipping their products from the U.S and Canada, but Biotech Week News reported a study done by Legitcript (an association to verify that e-pharmacies’ meet the standard requirements) which reported eighty percent of Yahoo’s advertising on-line pharmacies ship pharmaceuticals from countries other than the U.S. and Canada (Report: Yahoo). Government Accountability Office quoted a report was done by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection that only 12 percent of import pharmaceuticals are legal, and the rest do not approved by the FDA (Prescription Drugs). This violates Yahoo’s policy and the law. Yahoo and other search engines cannot keep track of whether or not their advertising pharmacies ship their drugs illegally.
Some pharmacies provide online prescriptions for patients who answer some online questions. Rachel Brand concluded in an article in the State Legislature Journal that providing e-prescriptions is very convince for patients. On-line questions will be more accurate than answering a doctor’s questions especially when questions are private, patients will feel more comfortable answering on-line (Brand). In addition, one line prescription could prevent a lot of handwriting prescription errors. Online prescription is operated by a software to keep track on medicine prescribed by physicians, and in case two different may cannot be taken together the system will alarm a warning.
There is no doubt with the benefit of the technology that prevents major errors such as the warning alarm of combining more than one medicine, and handwriting. It could also be true that people feel more comfortable to answering a questionnaire on-line; however, on-line questions are not accurate. Typing is different than direct oral communication. Some people lack the ability to communicate in typing or writing, and they may send wrong information. Michael Cohen concluded in his article that errors in misinterpretation might occur while answering online e-prescription questionnaires (Cohen). The possibility of miss-interpreting the answers is more unlikely when talking to a real person. Talking directly to a doctor is more effective than typing on-line because patients can physically be checked in case they are required, while they cannot be checked online.
Patients hesitate to visit a doctor for many reasons. It might be to save time, money, or they do not have health insurance. When a patient cannot get his pharmaceuticals without prescription, getting them on-line will make it easy for them. Getting a prescription from a doctor is very important since patients might not know the consequences of taking one medication with another, and might accidentally harm their health. For example, Chris Bateman reported in his article that even non-pharmaceutical drugs, such as Ginkgo balboa and aspirin, can be very harmful to the health. When they are taken together, they will increase the risk of internal bleeding (Bateman). If mixing non-pharmaceutical drugs can increase the risk of internal bleeding, the effects of mixing pharmaceuticals without prescription could be even worse. The internet is full of illegitimate pharmacies who sell their drugs illegally. They can easily be found through their advertisements on popular websites.
We can save a lot of time and money, which can be invested in other important things. But people should be very careful when ordering from online pharmacies, because it is hard to know which one is reliable and which one is not. Some reliable online prescribers are approved, yet they cannot give as accurate as the physical pharmacies. The technology of on-line pharmacies can be very beneficial when we take the advantages and applying them on physical clinics and hospitals. For example, preventing hand writing errors, and keeping track of medicines are taking at the same period of time . Consequently, instead of answering online questionnaire by patients, physicians should fill up the blanks after a physical check up and orally asked patients. In this case we will take the advantages of physicians and online technology to avoid any consequences of health problems, which might be accrued by misinterpreting or from illegal drugs.

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