Question: how many medicines have you seen before that actualy dont work and can give different affects

Jack O'Sullivan answered on 8 Nov 2016:

Interesting question.

Although this is slightly outside my area of expertise, my colleague who I share a laboratory with researches this counterfeit medicines and adverse reactions from medicines.

My friends and colleagues here at Oxford researched medicines that were withdrawn from the market – medicines that caused harm to patients and were thus were not able to be bought anymore. Unfortunately, my colleagues found that around 40% of these harmful drugs were only withdrawn from one country (and therefore, still able to be bought in other countries).

For those that are interested, the full scientific paper is available here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4740994/