WebProNews

Recent deaths associated with drugs bought at online pharmacies have brought the issue front and center for many Americans. It's still unclear as to whose responsibility it is to police them, but the strongest critics are pointing fingers at search engines and comparison-shopping sites.

In British Columbia, a 57-year-old woman was found dead with bags of pills in her home she'd ordered online. Investigators found that the pills contained traces of uranium, strontium, selenium, aluminum, arsenic, barium and boron.

Security company Sophos' senior technology consultant Graham Cluely blamed the problem on hijacked websites being exploited by spammers. But Michael Brown, president of HealthPricer.com, says it's lack of policing that's to blame.

"The Internet really is the Wild West," he said in an interview with WebProNews. "If you did a search on Viagra, I'll be you'd find at least 50% that were illegal."

Brown's estimation matches the Canadian Pharmacist's Association's revelation that up to 50% of the drugs bought on the Internet come from online pharmacies that can be counterfeit or substandard.

Adding to the problem, says Brown, are second tier comparison shopping engines like eBay's Shopping.com, BizRate, Shopzilla, TheFind.com, and Comparison.com. These sites are powered by feed submissions from retailers who also buy sponsored links.

A Viagra search on Shopping.com, for example, brings up (pun not intended) three hits for generic Viagra. "That's illegal," says Brown, noting that the sale of generic Viagra is against the law in the US.

Brown believes the comparison shopping sites aren't selling bogus pills purposefully. It may be they aren't policing well enough, putting them at risk of being perceived as participating in illegal practices. 

With 80% of American Internet users, or 113 million adults, searching for health-related information (comScore), there's a lot of room for false perceptions. Buying prescription medicine online is rarer than information-seeking though, with online drug sales only making up 1% of $250 billion American prescription market.

Brown takes the opportunity to tout his own company, HealthPricer.com, a site that requires all merchants to have a brick-and-mortar presence, accreditation, and to be a licensed pharmacy with a pharmacist on staff.

"A merchant will contact us and the first thing we'll do is we'll go through their website, not with a spider, but personally, to make sure its structured in a way that's easy for the consumer to use. [We look at] their license, their shipping policy, [the safety of] the transaction process, and their customer service policy."

That's more, he says than Google or Yahoo do, whom Brown criticizes for having too open an application process for pharmaceutical sales and advertising. "The consumer thinks that Google endorses the seller, but it was a spider. Google and others don't know it's going on. They have no way to police."

Google, at least, disagrees with that statement. Google spokesperson Michael Mayzel told WebProNews that Google has a longstanding policy regarding advertising prescription drugs, and also requires third-party verification.

Mayzel cites Google's AdWords content policy:

Pharmacies advertising prescription drugs or using prescription drug keywords may only target the U.S. or Canada, and must be PharmacyChecker approved. Ads will not run until a valid PharmacyChecker identification number is provided. AdWords only accepts advertising from pharmacies that are based in the U.S. or Canada.

Google's AdWords policing also came under fire this week after malicious code found its way into Google's sponsored links. Our David Utter reported on this topic earlier. Mayzel says, in both instances, Google works hard to enforce its policies.

"We actively work to detect and remove sites that serve malware to our users both in our ad network and in our search results," he said. 

"We have manual and automatic processes in place to detect and enforce these policies.  In short, we take this issue very seriously.  We also encourage our advertisers to contact Google directly if they have concerns or detect suspicious malware.  Lastly, we encourage users to educate themselves on preventive measures to keep safe."