Forbes January 10, 2024
If a grocery store steeply discounted rotting cuts of meat or produce, would you buy them? Probably not. By the same logic, if a pharmacy tried to sell medications that are understrength or contaminated, few of us would go along. Bad meat you can smell or taste, but you can’t do that for bad meds. Unfortunately, we can’t be sure that our generic drugs are consistently safe and effective, because they aren’t independently tested before they’re sold. We simply assume they are safe.
For decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has used paperwork reviews and occasional plant inspections to ensure that companies make safe products. Because the agency believes that quality and safety are the manufacturer’s responsibility, it does...