China Busts Counterfeit Plavix Ring In Ongoing Crackdown

First Viagra, then anticancer drugs, now a best-selling blood thinner. Plavix is the latest target to be unveiled in the nationwide hunt for fake drugs in China, where ring leaders are now using social media to mask their activities and cast a wide net around the vast country, targeting patients taking some of the most prescribed drugs from multinational drug makers.

BEIJING – When a resident in China’s central Hubei province surnamed Li found out that Plavix (clopidogrel) tablets, a best-selling blood thinner made by French firm Sanofi, purchased the day earlier for his ailing father soon became strange and “soggy”, he realized something was not right.

Li's father, who recently underwent heart surgery, needed the antiplatelet agent to prevent blood coagulation. When Li came across a...

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