In an op-ed in the The Hill, Dinesh Thakur, Founder of Medassure Global Compliance Corporation, reveals just how little we know about the provenance of generic medicines.
- Approximately 80% of America’s drug supply has “significant components” that were manufactured overseas, according to the Pew Prescription Project.
- “Lack-of-effect” results — when patients don’t respond to treatment — are attributable in some part to substandard medicines. The exact figures are hard to nail down because doctors often switch an unresponsive patient to another medicine without reporting the incident.
- Thakur points to various failures in the U.S. FDA’s overseas inspections and efforts to mask the extent of quality problems with foreign facilities that feed into America’s drug supply chain.
- He advocates for a new law to compel companies selling generic medicines, at a minimum, to disclose the facility and country of production for its products.
