Facundo M. Fernández, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is working to identify counterfeit pharmaceutical drugs, especially in developing nations, where regulation is weak. While, Fernandez has been using his mass spectrometer technology to test dollar bills for cocaine, his methods can also identify the chemical makeup of pills. He is currently part of an informal group of researchers and government officials spanning Africa, Asia and the United States who have teamed up with Interpol, the international police agency, to use cutting-edge technology in tracking fake drugs that claim to treat malaria. Counterfeit malaria drugs are of particular concern because of the scale and severity of the disease — it kills more than 2,000 children a day in Africa alone — and fears that fake or substandard malaria drugs are aggravating a growing problem of drug resistance. Click "source" to read more in this interesting NYT article.
