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Marketplace investigates illegal sales of a coveted antiviral drug. Tamiflu has been touted as a miracle, should influenza pandemic strike. Trouble is, it’s growing hard to get hold of through legal channels. We take a journey to show who’s been cashing in on our flu fears. CBC MARKETPLACE: HEALTH » BUYING DRUGS ONLINE Flu's gold: Buying into pandemic fear Broadcast: January 29, 2006 The golden pill at the heart of the scheme is an antiviral called Tamiflu. This is a story about a hunt for a prescription drug that everybody wants, but nobody can get. It’s a hunt that leads...

There is no evidence that Tamiflu, the drug being stockpiled by Britain, the United States and Europe, will work if a flu pandemic takes off in humans, according to a review published today by the Lancet medical journal. None of the four existing drugs against influenza has much effect, the paper says. The authors strongly warn against relying on drugs to stamp out a potential avian flu pandemic, saying complacency could get in the way of more useful public health measures - such as hygiene and isolation - to stop the spread of infection.

WASHINGTON — In a development health experts are calling alarming, two bird flu patients in Vietnam died after developing resistance to Tamiflu, the key drug that governments are stockpiling in case of a large-scale outbreak.

Toronto — Researchers in Vietnam have reported two additional cases of H5N1 avian flu infection in which the virus developed resistance to the antiviral drug Tamiflu. While the findings will likely lead to concern over the future efficacy of the drug — the main weapon in the limited arsenal against pandemic flu — influenza experts were quick to caution against over-interpreting the results. But they said the findings raise serious concerns about whether the current dosing regime — which is based on experience with regular human flu strains — is adequate to combat the infection caused by this virulent avian...

New Tamiflu-resistant bird flu cases stir fears 14:29 22 December 2005 NewScientist.com news service Shaoni Bhattacharya New England Journal of Medicine Fears have been raised over more evidence suggesting that the deadly H5N1 avian influenza can mutate into strains resistant to the frontline flu drug Tamiflu. Two more patients with drug-resistant bird flu have been documented by researchers in Vietnam. The two patients, of eight studied, died from H5N1 influenza A, despite treatment with Tamiflu (oseltamivir) having been started early in one of them. The first case of Tamiflu-resistant bird flu was reported in October 2005 . Although the case...

SAN FRANCISCO — Customs agents have intercepted more than 50 shipments of counterfeit Tamiflu, the antiviral drug being stockpiled in anticipation of a bird flu pandemic, marking the first such seizures in the U.S., authorities said Sunday. The first package was intercepted Nov. 26 at an air mail facility near San Francisco International Airport, said Roxanne Hercules, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Since then, agents have seized 51 separate packages, each containing up to 50 counterfeit capsules labeled generic Tamiflu. The fake drugs had none of Tamiflu's active ingredients, and officials were running tests to determine what...

A VIETNAMESE doctor who has treated dozens of victims of avian flu claims the drug being stockpiled around the world to combat a pandemic is “useless” against the virus. Dr Nguyen Tuong Van runs the intensive care unit at the Centre for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi and has treated 41 victims of H5N1. Van followed World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines and gave her patients Tamiflu, but concluded it had no effect. “We place no importance on using this drug on our patients,” she said. “Tamiflu is really only meant for treating ordinary type A flu. It was not designed to...

Amantadine is used for the prevention or treatment of infections with influenza a virus. Health-Effects.net (Panama City) – Today, www.Health-Effects.net, a leading online pharmacy that specializes in the distribution of “O.T.C” medications announced an immune system package to help those at risk from the flu virus. Current flu vaccinations are created by isolating the virus that causes flu, weakening it, and turning the weakened strain into a vaccine. The flu virus, however, undergoes many mutations, and changes rapidly. By the time a vaccine is produced, new and different types of flu virus may very well appear. The current avian flu...

Federal health advisers are looking into the deaths of 12 Japanese children who took Tamiflu, part of their annual safety review of the anti-flu medication and seven other drugs. There are no reports of deaths in the United States or Europe associated with Tamiflu. "Based on the information we have right now, we cannot say definitively there is a causal relation between the drug and the children's death," Dr. Murray Lumpkin, the deputy commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said Thursday. The Japanese deaths were detailed in papers released in advance of a Food and Drug Administration advisory...

Tokyo Japan's health ministry says it plans to reissue a warning of dangerous behavioral side effects linked to the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu. This comes amid reports that several children in Japan died after taking the medication. Governments around the world are stockpiling the medicine amid growing fears of a possible human pandemic of avian influenza. Japan's health ministry says it is looking into reports of a number of sudden deaths of young people who had taken prescribed dosages of Tamiflu. The ministry confirms that it has concluded that the death of one boy was the result of side effects from...

APEC consumed by WTO deadlock, bird flu fears Sat Nov 12, 8:36 AM ET Asian and Pacific nations worked to ease the deadlock in troubled global trade talks and agreed joint measures to help prevent a possible bird flu pandemic. The 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum began talks in the South Korean city of Busan amid gloomy predictions about the December 13-18 World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong. A US official said the fate of the 2001 Doha round of WTO talks, which has foundered mainly over trade-distorting agricultural subsidies in rich countries, would dominate...

"Tamiflu is not a vaccine or a cure for the flu..."

The bags aren’t flying off store shelves just yet, but a Chinese herb sold throughout Boston’s Chinatown is the biggest defense against the deadly bird flu experts fear could turn into a worldwide outbreak. Chinatown shop owners who sell star anise - a star-shaped dried fruit that smells like licorice - say it’s a household Asian spice used to add flavor when cooking. Star anise is a household Asian spice. (Staff photo by Stuart Cahill) But more important, the fruit’s seeds contain shikimic acid - the key ingredient in Tamiflu, the only known drug to fight off the lethal avian...

Wartime tactic doubles power of scarce bird-flu drugUse of common drug could stretch world stocks of Tamiflu. Declan Butler Doctors think they have hit on a way to effectively double supplies of a drug that fights bird flu. Administering Tamiflu alongside a second drug that stops it being excreted in urine means that only half doses of the treatment would be needed.     As bird flu threatens to spread, officials are keen to find better treatments. © punchstock Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate) is the main antiflu medicine recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO suggests that, in...

ZURICH (Reuters) - Drug maker Roche halted supplies of its antiviral drug to the United States to head off hoarding by consumers fearing bird flu, as another firm, and Vietnam, said they were preparing to manufacture their own treatments. ADVERTISEMENT Tests on the latest suspected human cases of the disease produced negative results on Thursday, but fear remained high that bird flu was spreading around the world among wild birds and poultry and threatened to produce a human pandemic. Roche Holding AG said it had halted deliveries of Tamiflu to the United States and Canada until the start of the...

Taiwan has responded to bird flu fears by starting work on its own version of the anti-viral drug, Tamiflu, without waiting for the manufacturer's consent. Taiwan officials said they had applied for the right to copy the drug - but the priority was to protect the public. Tamiflu, made by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, cannot cure bird-flu but is widely seen as the best anti-viral drug to fight it, correspondents say. Bird flu has killed at least 60 people in Asia since December 2003. Scientists fear the lethal H5N1 strain of the virus could combine with human flu or mutate...

AP SCIENCE WRITER NEW YORK -- Bird flu virus found in a Vietnamese girl was resistant to the main drug that's being stockpiled in case of a pandemic, a sign that it's important to keep a second drug on hand as well, a researcher said Friday. He said the finding was no reason to panic. The drug in question, Tamiflu, still attacks "the vast majority of the viruses out there," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Tokyo and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The drug, produced by Swiss-based Roche Holding AG, is in short supply as nations around the world...

Experts in Hong Kong said on Friday that the human H5N1 strain which surfaced in northern Vietnam this year had proved to be resistant to Tamiflu, a powerful antiviral drug which goes by the generic name, oseltamivir. They urged drug manufacturers to make more effective versions of Relenza, another antiviral that is also known to be effective in battling the much feared H5N1. Relenza is inhaled. "There are now resistant H5N1 strains appearing, and we can't totally rely on one drug (Tamiflu)," William Chui, honorary associate professor with the department of pharmacology at the Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong,...

Unarmed against a flu pandemic WASHINGTON - Public health officials preparing to battle what they view as an inevitable influenza pandemic say the world lacks the medical weapons to fight the disease effectively and will not have them anytime soon.Public health specialists and manufacturers are working frantically to develop vaccines, drugs, strategies for quarantining and treating the ill, and plans for international cooperation, but these efforts will take years. Meanwhile, the most dangerous strain of influenza to appear in decades - the H5N1 "bird flu" in Asia - is showing up in new populations of birds, and occasionally people, almost...

We've heard some very interesting news recently that countries are stocking up on a bird flu vaccine. And yet the very newspapers in which we see these headlines say the vaccine is currently being beta-tested on small groups of people. I'm curious how countries are stocking up on a vaccine that hasn't even gone through testing yet. Clearly this vaccine isn't in production. How can countries be stockpiling the vaccine if it isn't being produced? While I think these stockpile rumors are simply state lies intended to calm people down, I know that some countries actually are stocking up on...