@article{ref1,
title="Stopping murder by medicine: introducing the Model Law on Medicine Crime",
journal="American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene",
year="2015",
author="Attaran, Amir",
volume="92",
number="6 Suppl",
pages="127-132",
abstract="The iatrogenic pandemic of untreated illness related to falsified and substandard medicines is intolerable, but has a logical explanation; in many countries, inadequate laws make it barely illegal to manufacture or distribute poor-quality medicines. The law hardly punishes those who intentionally or recklessly deal in falsified or substandard medicine, when clearly it should criminalize these perpetrators in proportion to the grievous-even fatal-injury they inflict on public health. To solve this omission, this article presents a new Model Law on Medicine Crime, which countries may freely use as a template for strengthening their national laws. The Model Law includes criminal prohibitions against manufacturing, trafficking, or selling poor-quality medicines; principles for appropriately punishing offenders; special provisions for Internet-based medicine crimes; tools for encouraging whistle-blowers to cooperate with law enforcement; incentives for developing governments to strengthen their drug regulatory capacity; and important exceptions to prevent the law being abused, such as to prevent the prosecution of legitimate medical researchers or to prevent good-quality generic medicines being seized while in transit. The Model Law is discussed and explained and is offered free of charge under a Creative Commons license to any governments wanting to implement it.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0002-9637",
doi="10.4269/ajtmh.15-0154",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.4269/ajtmh.15-0154"
}