Comments on: FDA goes after largest manufacturer of generic animal drugs

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:38:18 +0000

This stuff still in the news in early 2010. Guess TEVA is still killing people’s pets, putting profits ahead of safety, while still being evasive. Nice going TEVA. Greedy jerks.

By: daenette

daenette — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:28:06 +0000

I worked for Teva Animal health, this had nothing to do with them it was all about the original owners, Phoenix Scientific, the feds went back on their practices, that owner should be in jail!

By: Original Lori

Original Lori — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:03:20 +0000

Teva is also a sponsor of the Philadelphia Eagles. Strike two…unless they pull out as a sponsor.

By: Ally

Ally — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:18:20 +0000

Teva’s product site was up this morning but now, *poof* it’s gone. I didn’t realize how many products of theirs by DVM Pharmaceuticals I had in my house until I went looking. The 3VCaps are going in the trash. Then there’s the Malaseb, ChlorhexiDerm shampoo & OxyDex gel to consider. Not making me feel real comfy right now…

By: Lis

Lis — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:16:35 +0000

Pat, I know not all pharmaceutical or R&D facilities have in-house staffed libraries, because of the reaction of newly-hired scientists when they discovered what I could do for them, so I’m sure you just honestly have no idea what librarians in pharmaceutical and R&D facilities do.

No, I didn’t operate under the same kinds of constraints, but I was responsible for making sure that the labs, the animal facility, and the pilot plant all had the information they needed both to stay in compliance, and to actually do their jobs.

I was employee number 25, because the parent company valued libraries and librarians highly as a means to accomplish those ends, and we were much, much larger by the time I left. In part because I made sure they had what they needed while controlling costs in that area much better than in facilities that either didn’t have a librarian, or didn’t have one, pardon me for saying so, as good as I am.

Not all of the expenses are direct R&D and regulatory compliance. A lot is marketing, and it’s a natural impulse of corporations to tuck as many of the expenses as possible into categories that are more beneficial to the bottom line and, at the size level of pharmaceutical companies, to the ability to cry poor-mouth to the government.

By: The OTHER Pat

The OTHER Pat — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:09:23 +0000

Where you were, could you be written up for things like using the wrong color of ballpoint pen, or not writing your dates in the proper format? And did you find it necessary to spend about the first two hours of each morning logging out the equipment before you could actually start working?

(I’m not asking these questions to be snitty - I just literally wonder if you were under the same degree of controls as exist in the laboratory and manufacturing settings.)

By: Lis

Lis — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:01:46 +0000

I wasn’t in the lab; I was the librarian. For ten years.

By: The OTHER Pat

The OTHER Pat — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:47:15 +0000

Lis, have you ever worked in a pharmaceutical drug development laboratory under GMP guidelines? (Just wondering - not sure if you’ve ever mentioned this).

By: Lis

Lis — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:24:05 +0000

Many generic manufacturers also manufacture brand-name drugs, and they are as tightly regulated regardless. A generic is not always the right choice, but it often is, and there’s no reason for the consumer not to get whatever benefit there is.

Also, while developing a new drug really is quite expensive, and the developing company has an exclusive market for it for only a few years usually, the cost isn’t as high as the companies claim. They go to a fair amount of effort to fold marketing costs into “development” costs and claim they have to make back every penny of the combined costs in order to not go broke.

Meanwhile, in Europe, drug development has been going on quite effectively for several decades under tighter cost controls and the same “twenty years from filing” patent protection scheme that we only adopted in the late 1990s.

Don’t cry for Johnson & Johnson.

By: The OTHER Pat

The OTHER Pat — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:33:34 +0000

I have often felt like generic pharmaceutical companies are just trying to ride the back of the “cash cow” of drugs that the original company has sometimes spent as long as 20 years to get from first inception to market - having to follow FDA guidelines every step of the way. Then - when the few remaining years of patent protection they have left runs out - in step the generic manufacturers to profit from all the work that went before. And I wonder to what extent they really *get* how pervasive the mindset has to be to work with and follow the GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) guidelines mandated for all of those making drugs meant to go into living beings?

Then - on top of that - this is a company that was bought out by a non-US company (Isreali) in 2006, so that makes me wonder even MORE if they really, really understand how hard (and expensive!) it is to follow the US-mandated GMP’s to the letter?

I don’t like generics for a LOT of reasons. And this is a good example of why.