If You Take Generic Medicines, You NEED To Read This

Fortune magazine has done an outstanding investigative journalism job on the incredible saga of Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals, an Indian company with worldwide ties that was caught falsifying data and even using original brand-name drugs as substitutes to show in their internal data.

The investigation spanned years while the suspect drugs continued to be sold world-wide and incredibly, this company is still selling medications in the US and I presume other countries, even after paying out enormous fines.

features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com...

Thakur knew the drugs weren't good. They had high impurities, degraded easily, and would be useless at best in hot, humid conditions. They would be taken by the world's poorest patients in sub-Saharan Africa, who had almost no medical infrastructure and no recourse for complaints. The injustice made him livid. Ranbaxy executives didn't care, says Kathy Spreen, and made little effort to conceal it. In a conference call with a dozen company executives, one brushed aside her fears about the quality of the AIDS medicine Ranbaxy was supplying for Africa. "Who cares?" he said, according to Spreen. "It's just blacks dying."

What Thakur unearthed over the next months would form some of the most devastating allegations ever made about the conduct of a drug company. His information would lead Ranbaxy into a multiyear regulatory battle with the FDA, and into the crosshairs of a Justice Department investigation that, almost nine years later, has finally come to a resolution.

On May 13, Ranbaxy pleaded guilty to seven federal criminal counts of selling adulterated drugs with intent to defraud, failing to report that its drugs didn't meet specifications, and making intentionally false statements to the government. Ranbaxy agreed to pay $500 million in fines, forfeitures, and penalties -- the most ever levied against a generic-drug company. (No current or former Ranbaxy executives were charged with crimes.) Thakur's confidential whistleblower complaint, which he filed in 2007 and which describes how the company fabricated and falsified data to win FDA approvals, was also unsealed. Under federal whistleblower law, Thakur will receive more than $48 million as part of the resolution of the case.

This is disgusting. Apparently the US did remove Lipitor for containing 'glass particles'. But there is a long list of generics manufactured and sold by them. See below

Drugs sold in US manufactured by Ranbaxy Laboratories

Well, looking down the list again...the generic for Lipitor (Atorvastatin) is on the list.

Okay, this is an example of why we need regulated capitalism. Especially these days, corporations can get away with whatever they want to (since the bailout). There is no accountability. Without accountability, why would corporations serve their customers?

As you can see, pharmaceutical companies are even getting away with selling fake drugs for cash - they aren't even doing their job that they are getting paid to do.

So what I want to know if you or someone you know has taken these things will they be testing for damage? If they found glass in some of this that's pretty unreal. I know a woman whose taken a couple of these for a few years. She has such bad stomach pains (no doc can find cause yet) that it makes me wonder. Natural remedies are the answer and I think many are coming to that but for those who used this stuff its incredibly sad.

Originally posted by darkbake
Okay, this is an example of why we need regulated capitalism. Especially these days, corporations can get away with whatever they want to (since the bailout). There is no accountability.

I think you'll find there are indeed regulations, and accountability in the Pharmaceutical industry. You may have heard of the FDA. Even if they arent doing their job properly, that doesnt remove the fact that concepts you are for are already in place.

While lots of people seem to hate the FDA, I think they should be given more funding to do an even more thorough job. At a quick glance, the examples seen in this article should have been picked up as a matter of course during the random audit processes. Maybe they dont do it often enough.

One of the things the article doesnt mention is that really this should all have been stopped by India's own drug regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization. It appears that like a lot of things in India, it is corrupt. A quick search of the internet find nothing good said about it at all.

I'm wondering if by 'glass' what they really found was sand... I don't even know how you'd tell the difference in small particles.

I won't take any long term medications anymore. I know that this may put me at risk for problems but it is better to be at risk than to lose my health. My liver cannot take the meds, it quits detoxing the body when I take anything long term, even a vitamin pill.

reply to post by signalfire


I saw and ABC vid say it was like eating sand but nothing saying it was. Still, I don't want glass or sand in my drugs (not that i take any).

That was not the only problem

inspection of the company’s plants at Paonta Sahib in Himachal Pradesh and Dewas in Madhya Pradesh by the US FDA uncovered startling issues like violations, incomplete testing record, inadequate stability programme and manufacturing practices that did not follow regulation. It was found that Ranbaxy was using raw chemicals from unapproved sources and fabricating in-house test data to meet FDA standards.

prowess.com

From the op

For all the actions taken by federal authorities, there is a deeply troubling aspect to the government's role in the saga of Ranbaxy. Even as ever more details of the company's long-running misconduct emerged, drug regulators permitted Ranbaxy to keep on selling many of its products.

Indeed, the FDA -- charged with protecting the safety and health of Americans -- went even further. Despite the agency's finding of fraud and misconduct, it granted Ranbaxy lucrative rights to sell new generic drugs. In the most high-profile example, in November 2011 the FDA allowed the company to maintain its exclusive first dibs on making the generic version of a medicine taken by tens of millions of Americans: Lipitor. In the first six months, this privilege allowed Ranbaxy to generate $600 million in sales of generic atorvastatin, as nonbranded Lipitor is known.

Should the FDA have been surprised, then, when problems emerged just a year later?

This has been going on since 2008 and they are just now fined.

Do you know what they do in India . They take known banned drugs from the USA .
ie Vioxx ,and rename it,and do studies with test subjects ,as if its a new drug .
It can never be marketed here ,but they get money to do the studies .
Test subjects die and have all kinds of detrimental side affects.
It's despicable .

We need to stop outsourcing to India ,period.
No offense to honest citizens ,but they do messed up stuff to make money over there,at the people's expense .

It's just blacks dying? That's disgusting and I think all the CEOs deserve federal prison time in their countries. Although sadly he's right, it's only blacks, browns, and yellows dying in 3rd world countries where they can only afford to bury their family. I don't see a resolution to these problems any time soon. There is some major reconstructing in need in this world.