Food and Drug Administration has warned against fake "Tamiflu" sold through the Internet. FDA stressed that such medicines can lead to side-effects and other health problems instead of curing swine flu.

Buying antiviral medication online from an unfamiliar company can put health of people in danger. Such fake medicines available online are not checked by anybody hence these can contain undesirable substances.  

Recently FDA purchased such five different products over the internet advertised as cure for swine flu. Testing of these online drugs revealed that some of them contain talc and acetaminophen whereas some had different amounts of oseltamivir, the active ingredient in Tamiflu. But none of the medications were legal in U.S.

There are only two antiviral drugs, Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and Relenza (zanamivir), which are approved by FDA. These drugs are only available through prescription.

Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, FDA Commissioner of Food and Drugs said: "Medicines purchased from web sites operating outside the law put consumers at increased risk due to a higher potential that the products will be counterfeit, impure, contaminated or have too little or too much of the active ingredient."