Slashdot Mirror
RFID Labels On Prescription Drug Bottles
sonik1 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the Food and Drug Administration and several major drug makers are expected to announce an agreement Monday to put tiny radio antennas on the labels of millions of medicine bottles to combat counterfeiting and fraud. RFID labels provide a unique identifier that is almost impossible to copy. When pharmacists receive delivery, they should be able to pass a wand over the bottles and, through an online database, check the history of each. Each label costs 20 to 50 cents."
I certainly don't want to be heading towards the door with Oxy and have some hi-tech thief scan me and follow me home to rob me of the drugs I just purchased... Perhaps even someone could scan important/famous people and either blackmail them for their drug purchases (HIV/STDs) or just blatantly report it to the Fish Wrappers for cash.
This presumes that the thief would have access to the database of reference. The tag only contains a Unique ID, therefore, without the reference, the ID is useless. You or the famous person are at the type of risk you describe already if an untrustworthy person has access to your medical records or pharmacy records.
Once it does become viable for individual consumer bottles there will be yet another excuse why the prices need to continue to go up. Everything needs to cost more especially in the pharmaceutical industry. I swear everyone is in on it. I am told I need three low dose drugs when I have a feeling that a higher dose of another would handle it just fine. I am told that I am being prescribed these particular drugs because my coverage is good enough to afford it... It all leads to more money for everyone.
True. It is a corrupt system. But, on the other hand, millions of surgeries are avoided and lives preserved by the drugs every year.
Then WTF are we doing this? 20 cases of counterfeit drugs yet we have to spend thousands and thousands and pass that on to the consumer. Ugh. Yeah, they are going to say that we need to protect against a possible outbreak of this. Personally, I don't see how a label can help when the medicine inside is what is important. Anyone can swap out the real meds inside for their counterfeit ones.
The drugs that are reiceved are not usually in ready-to-distribute packages. The pharmacist takes from the big bottle and puts into your bottle. This is more dealing with the bottles that the pharmacist recieves. These are generally heavily tamper-resistant, especially for more dangerous drugs.