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Are generic drugs inferior to Brand Names in terms of ingredients and efficacy?
By law any generic drug must have the same chemical composition to be FDA cleared for use as a substitute for the brand name
I should have added that what I’m saying applies to the active ingredient
It may depend on the drug. Some are very sensitive to changes in production, many others are easily copied. you would need to research a specific drug.
MY sister in law needed a liver transplant after taking a brand name antibiotic Ketek.
It depends. FWIW I consult in the pharmaceutical industry. With the name brands you can assume they maintain strong controls on quality. But lots of companies can make generics. There are well respected generics manufacturers like Teva, and many more smaller players. Probably best to steer clear of manufacturers that don’t have much to lose in a lawsuit.
rw, could you clarify how many and out of how many were taken off the market, according to your sources, hopefully separately for brands and generics?
also, taken from the market may be a sign of monitoring working, even if at this late stage
note that late during Trump administration, after shortages of medicines started, there was an initiative to identify what ingredients are sources from non-friendly countries and looking for substitutes.
Reb Eliezer, how long ago was that? How does she know the drug was the cause? And did you mean to say non-brand name?
RW, I don’t think we get a lot of medicines directly from China, possibly ingredients. India is a big producer of generic drugs.
“Are generic drugs inferior to Brand Names in terms of ingredients and efficacy?:
Generally not. There are a handful of exceptions, one that comes to mind is Levothyroxine which is the generic for synthroid. The two may not be equivalent, though this is likely not due to the active ingredient, rather the inactive ingredient might affect how the active-med is absorbed .
For a change, Rightwriter is 100% right. China is the primary source of both generic drugs and the chemical/biologic ingredients used in drugs manufactured in India, Ireland and of course, the U.S.
While the FDA ostensibly has inspectors at Chinese production facilities, they are limited in both the frequency of inspections and what they are allowed to inspect. At the end of the Obama administration and through the Trump and Biden administrations, there are ongoing efforts to onshore those production efforts, which of course accelerated during Covid. However, it could be another 5 years or longer before those efforts result in “most” of the drugs produced in the U.S. or by U.S./European countries being sourced 100 percent in either the U.S. or Europe.ok, so we agree on big picture here. Practical question is which medicines are seriously affected by possible quality problems… I think I heard of synthroid issues also, as ubi says.
for politically minded, this seems like a lose-lose – choosing between “china” and “big pharma”. Hope you side with US pharma for a change. And also note that those who attack “big pharma” implicitly support “big China”, similarly as those who fight “climate” help Russia as previous generation those who were fighting nuclear were helping USSR to sell their oil/gas.
ujm, Ketek’s generic name is telithromycin and she sued them and received money.
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