Counterfeiting, says Johnson & Johnson’s Ron Guido, is a form of flattery. “If you don’t have counterfeits in your business, chances are you don’t have a good brand,” said Guido, J&J’s VP for global brand protection, speaking at the ISPE annual meeting in Dallas last week. In other words, a successful product/brand (Gucci, let's say) is the apple of a counterfeiter's eye.

In September, FDA sent a warning letter to Sichuan Pharmaceutical Co., an API manufacturer in China. The letter cited the manufacturer's failure to adequately guard against potential product cross-contamination:

Bayer and its workers in Berkeley, California, are embroiled in protracted contract negotiations. Last week, we heard from Craig Merrilees, spokesman for the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), which represents the workers. Bayer owes workers and the community more, said Merrilees, and worker patience with the company is “wearing thin," he said.

A newly published article in the Journal of Pediatrics calls attention to the increasing numbers of children who are poisoned each year by accidentally ingesting medication not intended for them. More and more kids, the authors find, are winding up in emergency rooms after accidentally taking pills prescribed for their older siblings, parents, grandparents, and others.

Conventional wisdom in the industry suggests that drug product recalls are on the rise, and in fact if you look at the chart that leads off this CNN Money report today, you'd say the 2009 escalation is quite alarming. On closer inspection, as the article points out, many of these recall events are due to the problems of a few manufacturers, such as Advantage Dose.

In the latest installment of a continuing saga, Mylan Labs is suing the two reporters from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette who alleged Quality violations at the manufacturer's Morgantown, West Virginia facility.

Some clarity on the cause of the mysterious deaths of 21 polo horses. A Florida pharmacy has concluded that it used incorrect amounts of active ingredients in mixing a vitamin supplement for the horses.

John Graham of the conservative California think tank, the Pacific Research Institute, just published a research report, Leviathan's Drug Problem, arguing that FDA is overstaffed, overfunded and unproductive. He traces patient wait times for new medicines as contributing to far more loss of life than food contamination.

Yesterday's  big news was the fact that Wyeth Pharmaceuticals lost its appeal in the precedent setting Wyeth vs. Levine safety labeling case.

We appreciate Pfizer's efforts to educate the public on the danger of shady websites peddling countefeit products--but, caution, this one is not for the weak of stomach. Thanks to Drug Channels' Adam Fein for spotting this rat.

--PWT