Controverse etico-legislative şi oportunități generate de folosirea medicamentelor generice | [Ethical and legal controversies and opportunities generated by generic drugs]

Abstract

One of the major issues pharmaceutical companies confront within the commercial practice is related to the replacement of innovative drugs with generic ones, a much cheaper alternative, and at the same time, a lot more accessible to the patients. Comparing generic and innovative drugs it must be pointed out that both of them have to respect certain standards (related to purity, and efficacy) and have the same active substances; the difference consists in the number of inactive substances or the organoleptic differences between them. From an ethical point of view, the use of generic drugs increases the population’s accessibility to these drugs, but it raises various issues related to how much the patients are informed about this, how the efficacy of these drugs has been verified, or their safe use. Key-words: generic drugs, efficacy, bioequivalence, ethical controversies