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"For example, more interaction with pharmaceutical company marketing people, as well as having drug samples on hand, increases the likelihood that doctors will prescribe newer, more expensive drugs and fewer generic drugs. The more a doctor sees a sales rep, the less likely the doctor is to identify false claims about the drug, and the greater the doctor's tendency to prescribe more drugs overall. Doctors who interact with drug companies are also about 15 times more likely to request that drugs manufactured by specific companies be stocked in hospital pharmacies." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"I accepted that the high price of drugs was justified by the need to pay for the research to develop new ones, and that generic drugs were bad because they drained money away from research for new life-saving drugs. However, being a physician scientist, I am naturally inclined to question the evidence for any particular statement of fact. For most of my career this has been limited to specific questions related to my area of research, which is mainly focused on the brain and, more recently, heart disease." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"Add to their expense accounts all the lawyers they pay to defend intellectual property rights and to attack generic drugs, and it is a wonder that they have any money left to pay for actual research. Ten years ago I founded a group called the International Working Group for the Harmonization of Dementia Drug Guidelines. We succeeded in bringing together academics, industry leaders, and government regulators to discuss Alzheimer's and related disorders and helped craft guidelines necessary to demonstrate that a drug should be approved for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease." - Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel George, The Myth of Alzheimer's: What You Aren't Being Told About Today's Most Dreaded Diagnosis (Get the book.)

"These findings are another reason why "generic drugs should be prescribed for patients beginning chronic therapy, as long as there are no specific clinical reasons why a branded drug may be more appropriate," says Shrank. "Physicians commonly prescribe chronic medications for important medical problems. Both physicians and patients should be aware of how the medication choice directly influences the patient's ability to follow the prescribed treatment," he says. . - The Center for Drug Evaluation and Re-— search has more information about generic drugs at www.fda." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.) "Patients who are prescribed generic drugs are more likely to continue taking them than patients who take brand-name drugs, a new study has found. THE STUDY Dr. William Shrank, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, analyzed how well 6,755 patients who were enrolled in a three-tier pharmacy benefit plan stuck to their drug regimens. Under this plan, the patients had the highest copayment for nonpreferred brand-name drugs (third tier), smaller copayments for preferred brand-name drugs (second tier) and the smallest or no copayment for generic drugs." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.)

"A similar illusion of choice is found in brand name drugs versus generic drugs. Consumer's Union, the publishers of Consumer Reports, falls for this tactic. It has a website where it analyzes the safety and effectiveness of brand name drugs, and then recommend people use less expensive, generic drugs that often have the same medicinal effects. What it doesn't reveal is that there are other options ?like nutrition, healing foods, herbal remedies and lifestyle changes ?" - Mike Adams, Spam Filters for Your Brain (Get the book.)

"Creates obstacles for the introduction of generic drugs that would compete with brand-name drug sales. For example, the FDA now supports charging generic drug companies to conduct safety reviews on chemicals that have already been approved by the FDA and are currently sold under brand names. Attempts to modify intellectual property laws for its own gain, such as promoting proposals that would extend patent protection on drugs by several more years, thereby guaranteeing years of additional profits (at the expense of consumers) before competing generic drugs can be introduced." - Mike Adams, Natural Health Solutions (Get the book.)

"Nine out of 10 doctors think that brand-name drugs cost less than they actually do, and an equal proportion think that generic drugs cost more than they actually do. Most important, in terms of the cost of health care, the drugs for which doctors are most likely to underestimate the cost are those that are most widely prescribed." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "Comparison with proven therapies (not just placebos)—including lower-cost treatments, generic drugs, and lifestyle interventions—would be required before a new drug could be considered the "best therapy." The body would also have the authority to require that studies be continued long enough to determine the benefits and side effects of the various treatments and strictly forbid interrupting a study for "commercial reasons." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"Drug patent laws granted a company seventeen years of exclusive rights to develop and sell its product before the patent expired and generic drugs horned in on the market. (Today, drug patents have been extended to twenty years.) Three to six years of that patent were eaten up by testing the drug and getting it through the FDA approval process. If advertising only to doctors meant that a drug took another four or five years to reach its sales potential, that left less than a decade before the patent ran out and cheap generic competitors marched in." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"Most plans now cover only generic drugs. Co-pays for Medigap policies (policies designed to cover medical expenses not covered by Medicare) are tending not to cover drug costs, or have higher deductibles and less coverage.78 The focus of the AARP lobby is to get the government to pay more for drugs for 76 Kathy Jones, "Drug Prices Increase Under Part D Plan," Families USA, June 21,2006 77 AARP, http://www.aarp.org/research/health/drugs/aresearch-import-656-DD77. html 78 http://www.aarp.org/research/health/drugs/aresearch-import-656-DD77." - Kenneth W Thomas, Ron Gilbert, Gerd Schaller, Side Effects: The Hidden Agenda of the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel (Get the book.) "Not only that, the Third World Countries are prevented from producing or importing generic drugs in order to obtain medication for their HIV/AIDS victims. They are too poor to afford the high prices of medication from the United States. This opposition to relax the patent protection in a Third World country was carried out by both the Bush and Clinton administrations. Author Peter Weaver concludes, "They [the pharmaceutical companies] use the power and the money to shape governmental policy, to support political candidates, and to manipulate public opinion in their favor." - Kenneth W Thomas, Ron Gilbert, Gerd Schaller, Side Effects: The Hidden Agenda of the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel (Get the book.) "He found, in his investigation, that some of these generic drugs were marked up as much as 3000% or more. Yes, that's not a typo... 3000%! So often, we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs, and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies with the pharmacies themselves. For example, if someone had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand, he might pay $100 for 100 pills. The pharmacist might tell him that if he got the generic equivalent, they would only cost $80, making him think he was "saving" $20." - Kenneth W Thomas, Ron Gilbert, Gerd Schaller, Side Effects: The Hidden Agenda of the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel (Get the book.)

"Public Citizen also offers a number of ancillary guides, also free, ranging from "Diseases Caused by Drugs" to "Facts and Myths About Generic Drugs" to "Cutting Your Prescription Drug Bill." It says something that the site is reviled in many pharma marketing circles, which almost never fault its facts, for its temerity to tell it like it is, using science, not spin. The FDA's own site (www.fda.gov) is an enormous one, and confusing as well." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.) "For CEOs, it became a competitive issue not unlike that of generic drugs. A company's ability to recruit patients became a highly visible indicator — to investors, Wall Street, and board members — of a pharma firm's viability. If a lack of such ability ate into the company's production of a steady stream of blockbuster drugs, it could depress stock prices and create intense pressure by stockholders and board members. The issue was becoming an obstacle in the path of innovation and profits, at least as seen by top executives in all major pharmaceutical companies." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.)

"The Center for Drug Evaluation and Re-— search has more information about generic drugs at www.fda.gov/cder/consumerinfo/ generics_q&a.btm. How to Save Big on Drugs Americans spend an average of $885 annually on prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medications. But when it comes to cost, you have more options than you might think. Example: An average daily dose of the popular cholesterol-lowering statin Lipitor costs approximately $98 per month. Lovastatin, a generic of the statin Mevacor that is used in lower-risk patients, is available for $37 a month." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.)

"Attempts to modify intellectual property laws for its own gain, such as promoting proposals that would extend patent protection on drugs by several more years, thereby guaranteeing years of additional profits (at the expense of consumers) before competing generic drugs can be introduced. Suppresses free speech on the internet by pressuring search engines like Google to require "pharmacy licenses" from advertisers before they can post online ads for medications of any kind." - Mike Adams, Natural Health Solutions (Get the book.)

"Anyone without insurance will likely opt for generic drugs just to survive. We used to think that was a very good idea. We have been scrutinizing drug prices carefully for 30 years. When we began this journey we were unabashedly pro-generics. We were swimming against the tide. The overwhelming majority of prescriptions filled in American pharmacies were for brand-name products. In those days, pharmacists and physicians frequently defended branded drugs as being superior in quality and worth every extra dime because they represented an investment in future pharmaceutical development." - Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D., Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy (Get the book.)

"Two reports released by the American Association of Retired Persons found that prices of brand-name prescription drugs in the United States rose nearly four times as fast as the inflation rate in the first quarter, while the prices of generic drugs remained unchanged. (2006) "By accepting only advertisements for drugs and medical devices, medical journals have accepted an exclusive and dependent relationship with pharmaceutical companies," said a team of Georgetown researchers in a paper to be published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine on May 2,2006." - Mike Adams, Natural Health Solutions (Get the book.)

"TMAP concluded that the patented bi-polar drugs were superior to generic drugs.14 Jones concludes his nearly 70-page report with a damning assessment of the unholy alliance between the pharmaceutical industry and political entities, saying: "The pharmaceutical industry has methodically compromised our political system at all levels and has systematically infiltrated the mental health service delivery system of this nation. They are poised to consolidate their grip via the New Freedom Commission and the Texas Medication Algorithm Project." - Kelly Patricia O'Meara, Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills That Kill (Get the book.)

"Drug patent laws granted a company seventeen years of exclusive rights to develop and sell its product before the patent expired and generic drugs horned in on the market. (Today, drug patents have been extended to twenty years.) Three to six years of that patent were eaten up by testing the drug and getting it through the FDA approval process. If advertising only to doctors meant that a drug took another four or five years to reach its sales potential, that left less than a decade before the patent ran out and cheap generic competitors marched in." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"Until we are certain that all generic drugs are identical, patients will have to be extra careful, especially with medications that have what is called a narrow therapeutic index (NTI). That generally means that there is not much difference between a safe dose and a toxic dose. These medications require special vigilance when dosing. "it has been very difficult to obtain citable factual information about the extent of the problem of counterfeit drugs. Drug companies keep the information they have strictly confidential." - Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D., Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy (Get the book.) "Williams, MD, executive vice president and chief executive officer of the United States Pharmacopeia (USP), what he thought about generic drugs. The USP is the organization that has been setting US pharmaceutical standards for more than 185 years, before there even was an FDA.6 Before taking over the top job at USP, Dr. Williams worked at the FDA (from 1990 to 2000). There, he was deputy director for pharmaceutical science at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. He oversaw the division that reviews generic drug approval for the FDA. Dr." - Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D., Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy (Get the book.)

"Cheap generic drugs are the obvious answer in countries where budgets are stretched to the limit, where the commercial influence on public health is less strong, and where people are generally aware only of what is available, and not of what isn't. This is precisely why governments are doing what they can to persuade doctors to prescribe generically and, if this fails, to allow pharmacists to substitute generic alternatives when the prescriptions come to be dispensed. Indeed, business is already responding to these arguments." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.)

"We have been investigating issues related to generic drugs and the potential dangers of counterfeiting for years. We have interviewed people at the FDA and the USP (United States Pharmacopeia), which sets standards for all prescription and over-the-counter medicines sold in the United States. For more details on this issue and suggestions for how to deal with some of the problems that may be associated with generic substitution, please turn to Generic Drug Quandary on page 15." - Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D., Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy (Get the book.)

"A doctor may specify a brand name because he or she trusts a known source more than an unknown manufacturer of generic drugs. You and your doctor should decide together whether you should buy a medicine by generic name or brand name. Generic drugs manufactured in other countries are not subject to regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. All drugs manufactured in the United States are subject to regulation. 6—Drug Class Drugs that possess similar chemical structures or similar therapeutic effects are grouped into classes." - H. Winter Griffith, M.D., Complete Guide to Prescription and Nonprescription Drugs 2005 (Get the book.)

"Under this plan, the patients had the highest copayment for nonpreferred brand-name drugs (third tier), smaller copayments for preferred brand-name drugs (second tier) and the smallest or no copayment for generic drugs. There were six classes of drugs included in the study: cholesterol-lowering statins, oral contraceptives, orally inhaled corticosteroids (used to treat asthma) and three types of antihypertensives (calcium-channel blockers, angiotensin receptor blockers as well as angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors). The group received 7,532 new prescriptions during the study." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.)

"It has a website where it analyzes the safety and effectiveness of brand name drugs, and then recommend people use less expensive, generic drugs that often have the same medicinal effects. What it doesn't reveal is that there are other options ?like nutrition, healing foods, herbal remedies and lifestyle changes ?that achieve effects far beyond the limited effects of these drugs, yet accomplish them without the negative side effects and the risk of heart attacks, strokes and sudden death caused by many prescription drugs." - Mike Adams, Spam Filters for Your Brain (Get the book.)

"Nonetheless, doctors continue to prescribe calcium channel blockers for hypertension more than any other drugs, believing them to be in some way better. The marketing is evidently still "convincing," even if the scientific evidence is not. KEEPING THE REAL DATA HIDDEN Often the medical researchers who carry out company-sponsored studies are not even allowed to see all of the data from the studies they are working on. These researchers are left in the position of analyzing and including in their articles only the data that the drug or device manufacturers have allowed them to see." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"February 2005, making it the world's largest manufacturer of generic drugs overnight.33 But the EU's refusal to bend its rules so its citizens might pay more for the latest drugs would seem to express the nub of the problem from pharma's global perspective. 'It is within the countries of old Europe, which house 250 million people, that the problems lie,' says pro-industry commentator Philip Brown. 'Here, personal enterprise, self-sufficiency and drive have been squeezed out like juice from an orange, leaving just the pith and the peel." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.)

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