The People’s Pharmacy in The New England Journal of Medicine!

Generic drugs dominate the pharmaceutical marketplace. More than two-thirds of all prescriptions dispensed in the U.S. each year are now generics.
It’s hardly any wonder that everyone loves generic drugs. They cost a tiny fraction of their brand-name counterparts. Valium, for example, is an anti-anxiety medicine that was once the most prescribed drug in America. To fill a prescription for 100 brand-name pills, you would have to pay about $275. But you could get 100 pills of generic diazepam for less than $15 at a big-box discount drugstore.
The question is: how reliable are generic drugs? We have been asking that question for the last ten years, and the answers we have gotten from the FDA have not been very satisfying. Although the agency says all generics are identical to their brand-name counterparts, we have received thousands of complaints over the last few years.
Until now, the medical community has more or less ignored our pleas for better FDA oversight of these medications. But a Perspective article in The New England Journal of Medicine by Susan Okie, MD, (Aug. 20, 2009) provides a balanced overview of this complicated issue. Sadly, the article is not free…but there is a way you can read it for no charge. It will take you a few minutes, however.
To access this article without paying the $10 “purchase access” fee, you can sign up for a 21-day free trial subscription to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). If you go to “This article requires a subscription” and click on the “Start my FREE trial now” button, it will take you to an electronic subscriber page. Fill out the personal information and click the bill me later button. That way you do not have to provide credit card information but you will have a three-week free sub to the NEJM.
Once you are “subscribed” you can read
Read the article for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
PS…there are some other interesting articles in this week’s NEJM that you may find worth reading.