Byron Dorgan: “I think it is also the case that a lot of the discussion on the floor of the Senate has been about counterfeiting and…”

“I think it is also the case that a lot of the discussion on the floor of the Senate has been about counterfeiting and about the potential danger counterfeiting would pose with respect to reimportation, and also the danger counterfeiting poses with respect to the existing drug supply. If that is the case, it seems illogical to me not to include pedigrees and serial numbers and RFID technology and the latest counterfeit technology in this bill. What we had done with 33 of us cosponsoring the reimportation bill is, we understood with respect to reimportation you need to be sure it is safe before you proceed. So we drafted a section on that, consulting with all of the experts. We spent a lot of time on it. We have worked on it for a couple of years now. That section, it seems to me, would vastly improve the underlying bill. Maybe it is not a consensus. I understand the pharmaceutical industry does not want to do pedigree and serial numbers, and so on, the way we have described it. But it seems to me it certainly should be the case that we add as much as we can to this bill--not load it down but add as much as we can on the issue of protecting against counterfeit drugs, whether it is through reimportation or the domestic drug supply.”