Do you know where your prescriptions drugs come from? Why you should. You’ve probably noticed a new retail trend: provenance tracking. Whether you’re buying actual apples or a computer from Apple AAPL, +0.77%, it’s easy to tell where the item was made.
We can learn about the family farm that grew our produce or the village in Bangladesh that made our shirt. But for one type of product—something that many of us may ingest daily for decades—it’s almost impossible to determine where it came from.
The next time you fill a prescription for a medication, especially if it’s a generic, check the label to find out where it was made. And good luck with that.
“There’s very little transparency and it’s very frustrating,” said Lucia Mueller, president of PharmacyChecker in White Plains, N.Y.
Even if you get an inkling of where the medication was made, that’s only part of the story. Many prescription drugs have a handful of active pharmaceutical ingredients that may come from separate countries.
“It’s the difference between ‘made in’ which refers to the actual country where it was made and ‘product of’ which refers to the active ingredients,” Mueller said.
Why should you care about the provenance of your drug?
Every so often, alarm bells sound about shoddy overseas production of prescription drugs. In 2018, for example, a recall of drugs containing valsartan (used to treat hypertension and heart failure) made news. These drugs contained contaminants—probable carcinogens—due to faulty manufacturing processes. Chinese drugmakers Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals and Zhejiang Tianyu, along with Hetero Labs Limited in India, were the main manufacturers of the withdrawn valsartan. Because generics represent about 90% of all prescriptions—and 80% of active pharmaceutical ingredients come from China or India—it’s understandable why retirees who take multiple generics daily might question the purity of the pills they’re swallowing. ...............
................Once you’re sure you have the actual manufacturer’s name, type it (along with the drug’s name) into the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s database for warning letters.
It’s a red flag if your drug has received a warning letter from the FDA, says Eban, an investigative journalist and contributing editor to Vanity Fair. The FDA regulates prescription drugs, including those made in foreign plants. If it finds serious flaws in a drugmaker’s manufacturing or reporting processes, it can issue a warning letter and in rare cases restrict the drug from entering the U.S.....................
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/do-you-know-where-your-prescriptions-drugs-come-from-why-you-should-a9fea0b4?mod=home-page
