I endured sales pitches and smelled printed tabs of paper, which cheerful men and women handed me after a spritzing with the corresponding brand's scent.
It provides the generic names of drugs, their corresponding brand name and identity of the original manufacturer, the name of the Brazilian pharmaceutical producing the generic, and whether it is generally dispensed at a hospital or pharmacy.
The Dallas Buyers case is a variation on copyright settlement shakedowns called "speculative invoicing", one method the industry has been using abroad to avoid televised tears on the courthouse steps (and the corresponding brand damage).
A generic drug must be identical in composition to the corresponding brand-name drug and makers of generic versions are powerless to change it.
The manufacturers of generic drugs, he said, must use the same warning labels as the corresponding brand-name drugs, and they may not unilaterally alter those labels.
We compared the steady-state pharmacokinetics of lamivudine, stavudine and nevirapine in HIV-infected subjects who were receiving a generic formulation (Triomune®) or the corresponding brand formulations (Epivir®, Zerit®, and Viramune®).
The court ruled against the women, saying that the makers of generic drugs had no choice but to use the same warning labels as the corresponding brand-name drugs.
"Federal law requiring that generic medicines have the identical label as the corresponding brand products has provided American consumers the confidence to trust in generics for 80 percent of their prescription needs," Ralph G. Neas, president and chief executive of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, the industry trade group, said in a statement.
On Wednesday, the justices heard arguments in a follow-up case that presented an interesting wrinkle: May the makers of generic drugs, whose products must use the same warning labels as the corresponding brand-name drugs and who cannot alter those labels, also be sued for failing to warn users about the risks posed by their products?
