Generic - The Unbranding of Modern Medicine (Broché)

Generic drugs are familiar objects in clinics, drugstores, and households around the world. We like to think of these tablets, capsules, patches, and ointments as being interchangeable with their brand-name counterparts : why pay more for the same ? And yet they are not quite the same. They differ in price, in place of origin, in color, shape, and size, in the dyes, binders, fillers, and coatings used, and in a host of other ways.
Claims of generic equivalence, as physician-historian Jeremy A. Greene reveals, are never based on being identical to the original drug in all respects, but in being the same in all ways that matter. This edition features a new preface in which Greene explores shortages and price hikes on off-patent drugs, strategies by which old drugs can paradoxically become more expensive, and the role of historical analysis in present-day pharmaceutical policy.