> Go talk to a generics drug manufacturer in India yourself.
You mean the country that, more than a month ago, restricted exports of many drugs and chemicals used to make drugs (the so-called Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients). Your local end of the pharmaceutical supply chain can't deliver drugs that can't be made anymore.
True, I stand corrected. I only recently realized the impact of India's generic medicine in even developed countries when a user in my problem validation platform asked for a solution to 'finding generic medicine equivalent for branded drugs'[1].
> My dentist recently told me about 2 drugs which are essentially the same. The drug made by the foreign company costs Rs. 200 (approx $4). On the other hand the India generic version costs Rs. 30 (approx 50cents).
Well, sure. All the hard work's already done for the company making the generic version; even complex syntheses are trivial by comparison with the staggering amount of effort required to find and validate an effective new drug.
at least in india we have this generic medicine system that is run by the government. Not a fan of a lot of things but generic medicine at very very low prices.
check this link out and search for medicine.
remember the prices are in indian rupees where $ 1 USD = 90 INR ~.
they have cancer medicine, surgical supplies, basically almost all generic medicine under the sun.
I wonder why cant this model be replicated in other countries.
> For many of these generic drugs, this is a case where markets have literally already solved the problem. They're available from European and Indian manufacturers at extremely low cost.
This fixes part of the problem, perhaps. But the article explains that it can take other manufacturers years to ramp up production if they aren't already making the drug. This also doesn't fix the problem for non-generics.
Did you know if a pharma company takes an old drug and a new chemical to it to change its effects slightly, the patent is renewed, and that way it it never actually becomes 'old' enough? India will go on and ignore these patents to make generic drugs. Millions of indians have access to affordable medicine today. We can worry about the future benefits when you successfully petition oil companies to stop drilling for oil and invest in renewables instead. The Indian pharmaceutical industry is vibrant and thriving, that is why it has the capacity to reproduce generic versions of patented drugs at will.
You can live a perfectly fine, if frugal, life in India on USD $2 a day, but not if you have to pay for USD $1 tablets.
True, but what's the alternative? India cannot do something radical like endorsing SciHub or Libgen and risk derailing progress in academic scientific publishing.
But it doesn't mean India hasn't done anything in the past to disrupt absurd greedy licensing regimes e.g. Generic medicines vs Int'l Pharma Patents. I see every day lives getting saved by generic medicines from 'generic medicine only' stores in India and not to mention India's generic medicines being the lifeline for other poor countries. For this, India's generic medicine industry has been facing the ire from WTO to Interpol[1].
Drug is 8 cents a pill produced generic in India. They aren’t going to export it any more but you had your chance. You wanted to protect local pharma against generics. They’re protected.
Healthcare is full of artificially induced shortages in America, and Americans pay for that every day with their lives. Now, that’s just slightly more obvious.
Fewer than 200 Indians used the drug in 2011; impact on sales should be minimal [1]. Bayer's concern is probably the export of these generics (illegally) to other places where it sources more sales from.
WTO, American sanctions, American coups, CIA, to name a few. Also India actually manufacturers these drugs, and most of them should be generic because they have been around for a long time. Small nations would not be able to manufacture them the same way India does.
>>Always buy generic drugs, they're exactly the same.
I'm sorry to say. This is false.
This will be a bit technical but often, generic drugs are a racemic mix (both L and D conformations in some mixture) where as a branded drug may be a specific conformation or specific racemic mix (e.g. 75% L, 25% D.)
The issue comes from the fact that L-conformations may have different (better, worse, otherwise) effects than the D-conformations.
TL;DR Not all generics are the same as their branded counterparts and they might effect you differently. Caveat emptor.
Yeah, but that's not going to happen. If a big pharm company doesn't provide India-priced versions of drugs, the Indian government just declares the patent invalid and lets generics produce it for free (yes, this happens).
Title typo: should be `generic`.
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