Didn't the generic company in Canada (apotex?? something like that) put out a statement that it closed down due to cheap chinese generics on the market? I was unaware that european, north american and australian markets were being supplied with such generics.......... they like their generics to come with some kind of provenance......

Merck has not used that explanation. It's explanations are are around supply and distribution. And they have used legitimate paths to make their announcements.

The record of safety in drugs coming out of China is not that great, South America had some awful drug disaster, the details of which I do not remember, last year, where the medication originated in China. There was the milk powder disaster that was supposedly internal, but some of it found it's way out. Looking at those two stories gave a window onto how drugs are produced and distributed in the east - let' just say there is a problem with regulation - and sweat shop style production - and criminally produced fake drugs as good as identical until they are analyzed - and no watchdogs.

If there IS a flood of these cheap drugs in the world how come there are so many countries in which PD is still largely untreated due to a lack of drugs........

While the internet is awash with strange links if you do so much as enter 'sinemet shortage' as a search, most of them seem to be very dubious, and relate more to sinemet abuse than anything else.

Actually everything about this is still dubious, unclear, and very, very fuzzy. It is not wrong to seek some clarity.