Dirty medicine

[S.J.B.]

Dirty medicine
Katherine Eban
Fortune
May 15th, 2013

On the morning of Aug. 18, 2004, Dinesh Thakur hurried to a hastily arranged meeting with his boss at the gleaming offices of Ranbaxy Laboratories in Gurgaon, India, 20 miles south of New Delhi. It was so early that he passed gardeners watering impeccable shrubs and cleaners still polishing the lobby's tile floors. As always, Thakur was punctual and organized. He had a round face and low-key demeanor, with deep-set eyes that gave him a doleful appearance.

His boss, Dr. Rajinder Kumar, Ranbaxy's head of research and development, had joined the generic-drug company just two months earlier from GlaxoSmithKline, where he had served as global head of psychiatry for clinical research and development. Tall and handsome with elegant manners, Kumar, known as Raj, had a reputation for integrity. Thakur liked and respected him.

Like Kumar, Thakur had left a brand-name pharmaceutical company for Ranbaxy. Thakur, then 35, an American-trained engineer and a naturalized U.S. citizen, had worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb in New Jersey for 10 years. In 2002 a former mentor recruited him to Ranbaxy by appealing to his native patriotism. So he had moved his wife and baby son to Gurgaon to join India's largest drugmaker and its first multinational pharmaceutical company.

When he stepped into Kumar's office that morning, Thakur was surprised by his boss' appearance. He looked weary and uneasy, his eyes puffy and dark. He had returned the previous day from South Africa, where he had met with government regulators. It was clear that the meeting had not gone well.

The two men strolled into the hall to order tea from white-uniformed waiters. As they returned, Kumar said, "We are in big trouble," and motioned for Thakur to be quiet. Back in his office, Kumar handed him a letter from the World Health Organization. It summarized the results of an inspection that WHO had done at Vimta Laboratories, an Indian company that Ranbaxy hired to administer clinical tests of its AIDS medicine. The inspection had focused on antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that Ranbaxy was selling to the South African government to save the lives of its AIDS-ravaged population.

Read the full story here.

This is a fantastic piece of journalism. I am shocked and disgusted by what occurred here. It never ceases to amaze me how much corporations can get away with.

 

[Cadamec]

In my father's day, people trusted corporations and believed they would not harm or commit fraud, especiallly in the medical field.

Subsequent generations has learned to be skeptical because we have seen too many "bad people" steering the help of these companies and selling out the unsuspecting public for fast and huge amounts of money.

Kudos to the doc who took on the pharma company he suspected to be corrupt.

I have friends who like to buy "generic" viagra from India. I have tried it. I could tell it was inferior. The Internet has become the new "wild West" for unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies., IMO.

 

[23536]

This happens everywhere. I've seen it myself. The people who test the medicines are the same people who profit from the medicines. Every single new medicine you've taken has reached the market through some form of subterfuge. There is no actual guarantee that any of these medicines work.

I have told the US government what it needs to do to rectify this. It needs to adequately fund the FDA and conduct all pharmaceutical tests in FDA clinics and laboratories.

This is one step short of nationalizing the pharmacological industry, and I'm pretty sure that would be a good idea as well (in the long run, after the final armistice in the pharmacological wars of the 2020s)..

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

Gripping piece. Absolutely jaw-dropping. I'm ashamed to admit this, but I was ignorant of the fact that nobody independent of the drug manufacturer is involved in the testing and trials of drugs. Any institution trusted to police itself will rot to the core with corruption before too long. I never expected the US Food and Drug Administration to win any awards for transparency. But yeesh... I held it to a higher standard than this. Ranbaxy, and I'm sure many more bottom feeding cheapo drugsmiths, are really no better than quacks in the wild west peddling their cure-all tonics, and the FDA turns a blind eye. I wonder what their cut is.

What's so incredible is that Ranbaxy was pulling its malarkey pretty much around the world. It duped or bought off about 20 or 30 national governments' drug regulating bodies in some way or another.

I really hope by the time I'm in practice there will better safeguards in place for ensuring the quality of pharmaceutical drugs. I was really counting on using discount drugsmiths from far off places to keep costs low for patients. But it sounds like it's a real jungle out there, and I'd better keep my ear to the ground and listen to any word on the street (or net) I can get about a company's reputation and the reported quality of their products from people who've used them. I remember being able to send a pill of supposed MDMA to a charity who'd test it and tell you its contents and likely safety. Sounds like we need something similar for pharms. "Something seem a little off about your lipitor this month, sir? Just send one pill of it to this address, and they'll analyze it and send you a report. They'll warn pharmacies and the authorities if they suspect a bad batch."

 

[RedLeader]

Different patients in the trials had identical results - the fabrication was that obvious - and nobody noticed for that long? That is just unacceptable. We are smart enough to create automated systems that can detect fraud that human eyes miss. It should be requited that such tests are screened this way by an external party and results be transparent.

This is a very good article and people should make time to read it.

 

[Crankinit]

Different patients in the trials had identical results - the fabrication was that obvious - and nobody noticed for that long? That is just unacceptable. We are smart enough to create automated systems that can detect fraud that human eyes miss. It should be requited that such tests are screened this way by an external party and results be transparent.

This is a very good article and people should make time to read it.

Not just that, but how stupid are they that they didn't just take the time to vary the fabricated results? That's the scary part, that they would still be at it if they weren't so obscenely lazy. That and the fact that nobody was jailed or individually charged. A fine, even a $500m one, is a joke of a punishment for something like that.

 

['medicine cabinet']

when i picked up my last rx for imitrex (migraine medicine) it was generic made by ranbaxy, of all the companies i was wondering why they ordered from them, now it makes sense bc the owner of the smallpharmacy i go to is indian. maybe my next xanax script i pick up wont be 2mg greenstones but a bunch of onax's in green tubs lol.