An unusually united, multinational set of trade groups—along with e-commerce providers—are taking steps to thwart the growing business of selling drugs in an unregulated or flat-out illegal manner. Now, these online pharmacies will be confronted by the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies (CSIP; Washington, DC), announced in late July. The trade groups are the US’ PhRMA, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA; Brussels), the Japanese Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Assn. (JPMA; Tokyo) and the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manfacuturers & Associations (IFPMA; Geneva). Also on board are many of the leading credit card companies (Visa, American Express and others), the leading search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft), Internet domain resellers (GoDaddy, Enom) and Neustar, an Internet and telecommunications verification service.
