Drugs from India, cheap

H
A young entrepreneur
imports drugs at the
margins of the law.
By Leslie Guttman
ayden Hamilton commutes between
Portland and Bangalore these days.
Normally this would be a pain, but
it’s his choice: The 28-year-old is on a quest
to provide prescription drugs to Americans
who can’t afford them through the Internet
pharmacy he has founded, ProgressiveRx.
A couple of years ago, life was different:
no startup fever, 20-hour workdays or bad
airplane movies. Hamilton was working for
Ford Motors in London, helping to develop
innovations for sporty new car models such
as the Ka. He was in line for a promotion that
would shoot him to Germany with $175,000
a year, the use of two company cars and an
apartment. Everything was set for the globe-
trotting Portland native who has an MBA
from Oxford and spent his freshman year at
St. Andrews College in Scotland.
Then, Hamilton’s best friend from
Scotland, Scott Kilgour, got Lou Gehrig’s
disease. And Hamilton’s younger brother,
Michael, lost his job, leaving him without
health insurance to pay for his meds to treat
attention deficit disorder and depression.
While in Thailand helping Kilgour get
medical care, Hamilton discovered he could
buy his brother generic Prozac for 13 cents per
pill, compared to $1.50 per pill in the United
States. Seeing his friend’s fear of becoming a
prisoner of his own body, and his brother’s
anxiety at being uninsured, made Hamilton
Last year, Oregon requested permission from
the federal government to import from certi-
fied Canadian wholesale pharmacies. So far,
permission has not been granted.
Hamilton found that India, rather than
Canada, was the most cost-efficient source
of drugs, for the same reason that other
goods are imported from the region: low
costs for labor, rent and raw materials.
ProgressiveRx’s drugs come from Apollo
Hospitals Group, one of the largest health care
companies in Asia, and Pill and Powder, an
Indian pharmaceutical chain. When custom-
ers (the majority of whom are uninsured)
order off the website, ProgressiveRx employ-
ees in Bangalore arrange for the distributor
to ship the drugs in the manufacturer’s origi-
nal packaging with an expiration date. Each
shipment includes information (provided
by ProgressiveRx) from the U.S. National
Institutes of Health detailing potential side
effects and what the drug is typically used for.
Still, the million-dollar question is: Are
the drugs safe?
Hamilton says safety is ensured because the
drugs are made by some of the world’s biggest
pharmaceutical companies working in Asia
— GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and
others — as well as major Asian drug com-
panies. Both generics and brand names are
sold. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has
five classifications of “scheduled” drugs that
Hamilton is vulnerable to FDA prosecu-
tion for illegal importation, but he doesn’t
believe he’ll get on the radar because he is
selling unscheduled drugs for personal use
with a doctor’s prescription for a 90-day
supply. According to a statement on the FDA
website, these factors may cause the agency
to “exercise discretion to allow personal
shipments of drugs or devices,” though the
agency cautions that this potential loophole
is not a license to import.
Dwyn Miller, a 45-year-old Portland mail
carrier, has been ordering a generic version
of Protonix from ProgressiveRx for her acid-
reflux condition. She says she got tired of fight-
ing with her insurer to pay for the medication,
which costs $3.50 a pill from an Oregon phar-
macy but just 57 cents from ProgressiveRx. “I
asked my doctor, and he said he didn’t see a
problem because large drug makers manufac-
ture all over the world,” she says.
Less than one year after he launched,
Hamilton has an office in downtown
Portland and another across from a chai shop
in Bangalore. His brother and his father,
a Portland State University professor, are
lending a hand. Hamilton has gotten more
than 4,000 orders so far via the company
website (ProgressiveRx.com), mostly through
word of mouth and guerrilla marketing on
sites such as Craigslist and eBay. Hamilton
isn’t taking a salary for himself, and says the

wonder about all the other people back home
who couldn’t afford prescription drugs. “I
thought, there’s got to be a way for people
who don’t have brothers going to Thailand to
get inexpensive drugs,” he says.
With about $20,000 in savings, Hamilton
quit Ford and started ProgressiveRx, offer-
ing drugs at 80% to 90% below U.S. prices.
Forty-five million people in the United
States are uninsured; in Oregon, more than
500,000 lack insurance. Since 1990, consumer
spending on prescription drugs has more than
quadrupled, according to the Kaiser Family
Foundation. Thousands of Americans, as well
as a number of U.S. cities, are now flouting
federal laws and safety warnings to import
drugs from abroad, especially from Canada.
have the potential for abuse, from heroin to
Valium, but ProgressiveRx sells only unsched-
uled drugs, such as generic Prozac. That, says
Hamilton, is the difference between his outfit
and those spamming your Inbox with ads for
Xanax (Schedule IV). They’re just trying to
make a quick buck, he insists.
But Tom McGinnis, director of phar-
macy affairs at the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration, warns that the “quality,
strength and purity” of any drug imported
into the United States is in question. “We don’t
know how they were stored, how they were
shipped, [whether in] high heat, high cold,”
he says. “Anything coming into the United
States is going to be illegal. Medications must
be purchased from state-licensed firms.”
MICHAEL OLFERT
company is netting $4,000 a month.
But working on Indian time hasn’t been
easy. “Someone will say, ‘No problem, I’ll
be there in 10 minutes,’” he says, “and you
don’t see them for another four hours.” Plus,
the company must work around a seemingly Hayden Hamilton, founder
endless parade of Indian religious holidays ProgressiveRx
that close shipping and postal service.
Hamilton’s ultimate goal is to be not only
a social entrepreneur but a philanthropist
along the lines of his hero, George Soros.
Hamilton recently launched a nonprofit arm
of the company designed to provide low-
cost drugs to Africa to treat diseases such as
AIDS and malaria. He says: “I think it’s a
false trade-off to say that you can either be
successful, or you can try to help.”

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