EBay Inc. said Tuesday that it canceled an auction for the flu drug Tamiflu being conducted on its U.K. site, but not before bid prices surged on growing fears about the spread of a new avian-flu virus.
The world’s largest online auctioneer has a longstanding policy against the sale of prescription drugs and other controlled substances, spokesman Hani Durzy told MarketWatch.
“As soon as we became aware of the handful of listings that violated this policy, we pulled the listings from the site,” Durzy said.
Before the listing was pulled, 28 bids were placed for a single course of the drug made by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche Holdings. The highest bid for the drug, which reportedly was offered for sale by an eBay user in Birmingham, England, was made at 104 pounds ($181).

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Posted: 10|19|05 at 7:48 am. Filed under: UK News.