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Archive for January 29th, 2012

The pharmaceutical industry has a mixed view of generics and this shows up in the way drugs are marketed. Every manufacturer wants to promote the sales of its big-selling branded drugs. Once the research and development costs have been recovered, they are very high-profit products either until the end of the patent period or until the other manufacturers independently recreate the chemistry and patent their own versions. To protect the home market during the term of the patent, manufacturers therefore push the message the branded drugs are the trusted, reliable drugs. The generics are cheap copies which may be fake because they come from foreign manufacturers, or may be understrength or contaminated because of poor manufacturing standards. This is scare tactics designed to deter you from logging on to the internet and buying “cheap” drugs from international pharmacies. The manufacturers want you paying top dollar and keeping their profit margins high. But the patents run out and, whether the manufacturers want it or not, the generics appear and drive down the price of the affected drugs. This is finally good news for all those who have been buying at their local drugstores.  Read more...