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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."
1) charge 20 to 50 per RFID label
2) Opt out
3) ???
4) Profit!!!
So I can save 20 to 50 cents on my perscription by choosing not to purchase the RFID label? 5 or 6 perscription you woule have saved enough get a cheap bottle of wine.
Initially, the expense of the system will be considerable. Each label costs 20 to 50 cents. The readers and scanners cost thousands of dollars. But because the medicines tend to be very expensive and the need to ensure their authenticity is great, officials said, the expense is justified.
As if my three prescription drugs don't cost enough already (and my co-pays continue to increase) I am going to have to subsidize a possible invasion of my privacy as well? Are they going to insure that before I leave that pharmacy counter that the tag's information will be wiped?
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.
Costs are still far too high for individual consumer goods, like the amber bottles that pharmacies use to dispense pills to individuals. But prices are expected to plunge once radio labels become popular, so drug makers represent an important set of early adopters.
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.
This still doesn't stop someone from switching the drugs once they arrive at the pharmacy.
Counterfeit drugs are still comparatively rare in the United States, but federal officials say the problem is growing. Throughout the 1990's, the F.D.A. pursued about five cases of counterfeit drugs every year. In each of the last several years, the number of cases has averaged about 20, but law-enforcement officials say that figure does not reflect the extent of the problem.
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.
RFID labels provide a unique identifier that is almost impossible to copy.
Really?
It's a Bagel.
Why does it seem that RFID stories are automatically posted under My Rights Online?
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
because noone would ever tamper with the contents...
comment directly in my journal
So now they can tell which stuff came from canada, ingenious!
Well I'm not keen on RFIDs being anywhere, but I suppose there's no point complaining about them being on prescription containers, they already got my name and address on the things so I guess adding an RFID isn't going to make my prescriptions any less private.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Hey, at least its a good excuse to take a vacation to Mexico, and, oh btw, stock up on presription meds like Amoxycilin. Drugs are dirt cheap down there. You'll have to check how much you are legally allowed to bring back though.....
The real path to male liberation
So that drug companies can keep people from importing drugs from Canada? Same drug, same label, different cost due to state controls. I'm sure the drug companies would consider their own pill a counterfeit under those circumstances. Drug companies could even demand special cash registers to deny sales, and I'm sure that's part of the thousands of dollars worth of cost and the "online" database. Welcome to entertainment style DRM for medicine.
I think I'm going to be sick.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
NOT the little brown bottles you bring home.
This will save you MORE than money.This will potentially save you (or your family members) lives as it prevents fake drugs- or at least makes them a lot harder to produce.
The number of fake pills out there is staggering. This is actually a 'good' implementation of RFID.
The only thing this has to do with the little brown bottle you bring home is that it may vist a few cents more (the tag costs like 20 cents, the tagged bottle may fill 10-50 prescriptions). The benefit is that you can be pretty darn sure tha medicine you get is legit.
I think it's worth it.
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
Your Rights Online unless you're an online drug dealer or something...
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
RFID tags on the boxes means that it will now be easy for customs to deny entry of cheaper canadian pharmacuticals into the US since their history can't be guaranteed authentic. Remember that the Bush battlecry has been safety and with this you will be able to track drugs Canadian hands which are unsafe by definition since they aren't subjet to US laws.
Looks like the plan is unfolding as it should
Or is it just tin foil hat time?
Why would they be hard to copy?
They're a 10 digit number emitted over RF at 13.57mhz. RFID ain't magic, it's just barcode over AM radio.
Even the physical security guys are starting to realize that perhaps moving all access control to this tech was a profoundly questionable move. Something like a deadpool is forming for the first time someone walks by a TSA agent and electronically pickpockets access to the entire airport. Convenience, eh?
Or at least it is in this case.
I recently co-oped at a large pharmaceutical company and it honestly looks like RFID is a good idea here.
Counterfeit drugs are a serious problem. There are several large counterfeiting operations working out of areas like China that produce product that is so authentic looking that most people (even doctors) can't tell the difference. The only problem is that nobody has any idea as to whether the dosages are correct or if the product was manufactured under sterile conditions. There have already been a few deaths.
I've read quite a few people complaining about how RFID is going to jack up the cost of prescriptions, but I would willingly pay %0.50-$1.00 to guarantee that I'm actually taking what I think I'm taking.
It's your life, though. Feel free to gamble with it if you must.
As if my three prescription drugs don't cost enough already (and my co-pays continue to increase) I am going to have to subsidize a possible invasion of my privacy as well? Are they going to insure that before I leave that pharmacy counter that the tag's information will be wiped?
The article says the tags are for the big bottles the pharmacy receives, not the amber bottles for the consumers. This doesn't seem to be a consumer rights issue at all, mostly.
Woohoo new spam will reach our mailboxes: "Get the ONLY real RFIDed Viagra bottle!"
Home of Faramir Paint Shop Pro scripts
The only thing that makes sense is that drug companies are looking for a way to restrict sales of re imported drugs. It's not going to stop tampering and we can be sure that counterfeiters will be able to fake the RFIDs no matter what the drug companies do. If you can make one, someone can make one just like it. The only thing I can think of that works is computer enforced regional cost discrimination.
What this system will do is burn a pharmacy that's sold drugs that were bought on the cheap from Canada or South Africa. They own the database that says "counterfeit" and are forcing the pharmacy to buy equipment that respects that database. This will keep drug prices right where the companies want them by giving them a point of sale veto.
Welcome to the wonderful world of computer code law. The drug companies seem to have taken a hint from Holywood pimps and are designing cumbersome and error prone systems to stop anyone who'd try to get around their price structure. They don't care about your privacy or convenience, they just want your money. I'll bet that they even charge the pharmacy a fee for this wonderful new equipment on top of the equipment costs. They were unable to bribe enough state legislatures and get the crazy laws they want. Like DVD players, closed source software and video games, this new equipment will enforce laws that were never written.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So that when the someone wants to find out if you have been overdosing you can just sit on a scanner!
this will also help the current administration with the drugs from Canada issue. Now they can say: "The ones from Canada got no antennas so we can't allow them in!"
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Some readers appear to be missing the fact that this only applies to the large jugs of pills that the pharmacists receive. Your individual pill bottle will not have this antenna.
For now at least... I'd imagine that if this is succesful, that consumer bottles will be next on the list, where they'll likely meet the same kind of debate that RFID tags are now dealing with.
This will SAVE consumers money, of course!
By preventing fraud (and cheaper imports), the pharmaceutical companies will protect their investment, which will naturally lead to LOWER COSTS! It's a win/win situation!!!
You, the consumer, should embrace this, just as you should embrace DRM, because when companies don't have to enforce their IP, they pass those savings on to YOU!
Hey, that sh!t's worked before...
RFID tags have a VERY limited range. a few feet at most. to scan someone, you would have to be nearly touching them. you couldn't wardrive for narcotics, like one poster mentioned.
the tags are only on the large bottles that pharmicies get. the kind that has about 1000 or so pills in it. that is about 33 perscripions. so $0.50/33= $0.0001.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Nice troll. What the heck, I'll bite.
1. RTFA. The RFIDs are on the bulk packaging received at the pharmacy, they are not on the small containers doled out to the customers.
2. Why would a junkie, desperate for his next hit, be driving around in a vehicle, with expensive remote-RFID sensing equipment, looking for prescription drugs? Why wouldn't he just sell the laptop/van and buy the heroin he wants?
3. Where would this highly-sophisticated, highly-educated, well-equipped drug addict get a copy of the confidential RFID tag database that he would need in order to make the connection that ID # 8736704385748932 is Penicillin? And if he is capable of hacking (oops, sorry, I mean "cracking") into Pfizer's mainframe and stealing databases, why wouldn't he instead just steal a credit card database?
4. When did anyone invent an RFID reader capable of reading passive RFID tags at a range greater than 3 yards, let alone the 75 feet from the street to your medicine cabinet?
5. Why wouldn't the junkie just skulk around a rich neighborhood, pick a big, dark house that looks empty, with no security alarm stickers in the window, break in, steal the jewelry, and pawn it for drugs? Why go through all the trouble/hassle of war-driving, reading a bunch of RFID tags for foot cremes, when the cheap, classic, time-tested methods still work just fine?
In what world do drug addicts have the intelligence, financial means, and patience to do the ridiculous things you suggest?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
If you're that worried then unhook the battery and antenna attached to your bottle of v14g4r4 that will be required to broadcast the RFID through not only the medicine cabinet, but through the walls of your house.
RFID comes in both passive and active flavors and the passive kind that will unquestionably be used in pill bottles has a range that will - at best - be measured in inches. Not only that, but wardriving involves listening for signals that are already out there. To get a passive RFID read you need to transmit a signal - and cruising around the neighborhood broadcasting like that in the hopes that you can pick up the RFID tag on a bottle of p3ni5 pills that are still in the mailbox at the curb (which is as close as you'd have to be) is likely to attract a good deal of attention.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
About locks & thieves?
"Making more complex locks just makes for more highly skilled thieves, not less thieves."
Basically this is alluding to the fact that good security is not just about making better safes & locks, (because there will always be a thief who will open/crack them), but deciding how to keep the larger portion of the population from profiting off of your "valuable" items.
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
I have a feeling that the junkies wouldn't be doing this themselves. The underground distributers would be the ones getting the drugs via the tags. The junkies would just buy the end product much later from a street dealer flunkie.
According to a story in the Washington Post, the scale of the problem is much larger than "20 cases" might sound like. Each of these cases may involve tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of doses of counterfeit drugs, many of which are resold back to the major pharma companies, so your local drug store can't tell that they came from a shady middleman rather than directly from Merck's factories.
Part of the problem is that Even worse,If you believe that, I have some Ocean Front property in Arizona for sale - Are You Interested?
I can't disclose the precise location because it would be in violation of the DMCA.
RTFA.
RFID proposed for tracking from manufacturer to retailer. You're jug of 5000 Viagra (buy the 10's the 5's are 80% the price and a pill cutteris cheap) will only go up by $.50/$5000.
IMO this particular application is a solution in search of a problem. Drugs are already tracked. Every time a shipment changed hands, someone has to sign for it. Ahh, but the RFID solution is so much easier than taking note of the $8.78/hour warehouse worker wearing $50k in bling and driving a new H2.
What you should really fear is a mass introduction of taggants.
Put these in pizza and burgers and the guys at the waste plant will know who has been eating what and where they have been disposing of the residue.
Video camera with RFID scanner, targeting, automated fire control, and housekeeping will be a boon to the security industry.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
. . . the REAL reason this technology came about is because no one was ever able to figure out how to get a pill bottle through a printer or typewriter . . .
Also, the story that drugs are more expensive in the US is largely an urban myth. Patent-protected drugs without significant competitors are more expensive in the US, but because of free-market competition, generics are a lot cheaper here than in Europe or Canada. Malcolm Gladwell wrote an excellent article on this topic in The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago:
If drug companies or the FDA were making the US market much more inefficient than European or Canadian markets, this would not be the case. According to Gladwell, pharmaceutical prices in the US have risen only at about the rate of inflation, but pharmaceutical spending has risen much faster because people are taking more drugs than ever before. If pills cost the same as five years ago, but you take twice as many pills, your pharmacy bills will rise and it's not the fault of the drug companies or the FDA.The more i think about the more i think your right. The supporters of Liberal Gun laws (NRA) are pretty mental.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
#include "CURRENT_POLITICAL_CLIMATE_DEFINITIONS.h"d e "iostream.h"
a nds);
t e_hands) > A_LOT_OF_$$$) Appeal();
//should never get here
#inclu
bool JudgesRuling(double);
bool CongressApproves();
bool CoperationsArgueBetter();
double MoneysInvolved(double);
void Appeal();
void GoAheadAnyWay();
bool The_System_Works();
int main(int argc,char* argv[]){
bool RFID_tags_become_popular = CONSUMER_APATHY_INDICATOR;
long number_of_consumers = NUMBER_OF_SUCKERS;
long number_of_RFID_readers = CORPERATION_RUTHLESSNESS_INDICATOR;
double massive_amount_of_personal_data_in_private_hands =
RFID_tags_become_popular * number_of_consumers * number_of_RFID_readers * AVG_READS_PER_DAY * AVG_READ_COOKIE_SIZE;
bool RFID_scanning_is_illegal_search =JudgesRuling(massive_amount_of_data_in_private_h
if(RFID_scanning_is_illegal_search){ if(MoneysInvolved(massive_amount_of_data_in_priva
else
printf("You have no Privacy, get over it\n"); endl;
return A_LOT_OF_$$$;
}
return OUTSCOURCED_RFID_PROFITS;
}
bool JudgesRuling(double possible_infraction){
if(CongressApproves()) return false;
else if(MoneysInvolved(possible_infraction) > A_LOT_OF_$$$) return false;
else if(CorperationsArgueBetter()) return false;
else return true;
}
bool CongressApproves(){
if(CorperationsArgueBetter())
return true;
else
return false;
}
bool CorperationsArgueBetter(){
if(A_LOT_OF_$$$ > PROTESTERS_FUNDS)//always true
return true;
else
return false;
}
double MoneysInvolved(double data_recieved){
return data_recieved * NUMBER_OF_SUCKERS * DOLLARS_PER_SUCKER;
}
void Appeal(){
if(The_System_Works())
return;
else
GoAheadAnyWay();
}
void GoAheadAnyWay(){
printf("We will find other methods to make life better for consumers\n");
exit(-1);
}
bool The_System_Works(){
if(A_LOT_OF_$$$ > 0)
return false;
else
return true;
}
May the Maths Be with you!
Look, all this RFID chat is great... Wal-Mart using it on pallets of product, Drug companies tagging shipments with it, even Tesco and their RFID/picture setup. I'm pretty damn sure we can expect to see UPS/FedEx take it on soon as well.... I mean, how simple would THAT be, having a series of tags made up to chirp tracking numbers. Then you can chirp a whole crate as it is being loaded on an airplane and get the individual package responses.
;-)
My complaint is: WHAT ABOUT THE GODDAMN AIRLINES?!?! I've been complaining for _years_ now that the airlines have a ridiculous loss rate in comparison to FedEx or UPS, and now there's a technology that could turn baggage handling into a MUCH more efficient creature and I haven't heard word one about the airlines' attempts at it. Simply put, imagine RFID scanners in the holds of every aircraft, on the exit point of every baggage carousel, etc. Performing a systemwide search would be as simple as querying that package's ID, much as we idealize (and FedEx and UPS leverage) barcoding to create the same tracking record. RFID comes as an advantage in that it can be used to actively monitor items in holding and in transit; e.g. instead of being recorded as the last movement of the package is 'Deposited Into Holding Area B', the 60 second scan record shows that the package is currently located there, or if it has been moved into, say, Holding Area C, without being barcode scanned first. (I know, I'm explaining a simple concept, but the simplicity is what makes most people misunderstand the current setup). Airlines: sit up and take notice... RFID can remove peoples' trust issues with baggage handling for you. Pursue this opportunity, instead of complaining about how broke you are.
love and peace
-cheez
Not all people (think the visually impared, illiterate, non-english speaking, etc) can read the bottles, and some computer assistance can certainly help with the medication...
For us carnivores, "Sucking the marrow out of life" isn't a transcendentalist philosophy but a practical instruction.
Even including the "universal health care tax," Canada and Europe achieve better results (lower infant mortality, longer average lifespans) than the US and at lower cost than the US, regardless whether you measure in dollars per capita or as fraction of GDP.
There is no question that the US system of medicine is quite inefficient compared to other industrial nations. However, drug costs are not a significant contributor to this inefficiency.
The greatest source of inefficiency in the US is that Congress requires insurance companies to pay for state-of-the-art care even when a much cheaper, but inferior treatment would produce almost as good results at a fraction of the price.
Even for the uninsured, physicians and hospitals often choose expensive courses of treatment because saving money with alternatives, which might be marginally inferior but much cheaper, would potentially expose them to lawsuits if things turned out badly.
In Europe, the government will pay for therapy they consider cost-effective and often make you wait for it. If you want something fancier or want faster service, you're free to pay for it yourself. This gives people an incentive to ask whether they really want the state of the art, since it might cost them out of their own pocketbook.
In the US, everyone with insurance is decoupled from market forces and feels entitled to spend unlimited amounts on medical care in exchange for a small annual premium. This is not the way to get a market to operate efficiently.