“Paper Trail” Podcast: What the FDA Won’t Tell You About Generic Drugs — ProPublica

Arrow Right

Caret

Close

Search ProPublica Search Close<br>ProPublica is a nonprofit, investigative newsroom that exposes<br>corruption. We report in all 50 states and partner with local newsrooms. Our work spurs real-world impact and has received numerous awards, including nine Pulitzer Prizes.

Topics We Cover<br>See All<br>Abortion<br>Civil Rights<br>Courts<br>Criminal Justice<br>Debt<br>Democracy<br>Education<br>Environment<br>Health Care<br>Health Insurance<br>Immigration<br>Labor<br>Mental Health<br>Military<br>Police<br>Politics<br>Pregnancy<br>Prison<br>Racial Justice<br>Regulation<br>Sex and Gender<br>Technology

Our Biggest Series<br>See All<br>Life of the Mother<br>How Abortion Bans Lead to Preventable Deaths

The New Immigration<br>How Recent Arrivals at the Border Have Changed the Country and Its Attitudes

Friends of the Court<br>SCOTUS Justices’ Beneficial Relationships With Billionaire Donors

Description

For years, the Food and Drug Administration told the public that generics are just as safe and effective as brand-name medications. But ProPublica reporters uncovered reports from the FDA’s own inspectors detailing everything from pigeons pooping onto boxes of sterilized equipment to evidence of a factory cheating on quality testing. Even though the FDA knew about these reports, it let some of those troubled factories overseas keep shipping their drugs to the U.S. — some of which might have ended up in your medicine cabinet.

This episode details why and how a secretive group inside the FDA made the decision to keep this information from the public and how you can find out where your own medications are made.

Transcript

Editor’s Note: “Paper Trail” is produced as an audio series. If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the series. Transcripts are for reference only and may contain typos. Please confirm accuracy before quoting.

Jessica Lussenhop: ProPublica. Investigative journalism in the public interest.

Hi. My name is Jessica Lussenhop, and I am an investigative reporter at ProPublica. If you’ve never heard of us, we’ve been around since 2007. We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom and investigations are our bread and butter; it’s all we do. We have reporters all over the country — special shoutout the Midwest bureau where I have been the Minnesota correspondent for the past several years. Midwest is best! But we’re also in the Southwest, the Pacific Northwest, in California, in Texas and the South. When people in power abuse your money, your time, your trust, that’s when we show up. Possibly in your backyard. And on this show, I want to share with you this feeling I get all the time when I’m talking to my colleagues. They tell me what they’re working on, and it just breaks my brain. It makes me look at my life differently. And the investigation we’re going to tell you about on this episode is a perfect example. It starts with something you probably have in your house right now. A generic medication.

FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, “Meet Blue: Generic Medications PSA”: Meet Blue. Blue’s not feeling well. The prescription: generic medication.Blue wonders, Do they really work as well as name brands?

Lussenhop: This is a PSA that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration put out years ago about generic drugs. Generics are the cheaper versions of name brand drugs. The drugstore acetaminophen vs. Tylenol. Ninety percent of prescriptions filled in the U.S. are for generics. And in this PSA, the FDA is saying: There’s nothing to worry about.

FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, “Meet Blue: Generic Medications PSA”: Yes. Generics and name-brand medications do work the same. Even though they may look different, generics have the same key ingredients. FDA approval is equally rigorous for generics to make sure they’re as safe and effective as name brands …

Lussenhop: I’ve got four or five generics in my house right now. And I never gave them much thought. I didn’t think I needed to! But my colleagues at ProPublica spent about two years diving deep into the FDA’s own records, and they discovered something that actually scares me.

Debbie Cenziper: For decades, the U.S. government has promised and we all grew up believing that if you take a generic drug, it is just as safe and effective as a brand-name drug. But when I was hearing stories from inspectors who had spent months or years going from one factory to another in remote areas of China and India and other countries, and describing what they saw, I thought, How is that possible? How is that promise possible?

Lussenhop: This is a story about a powerful government agency that’s in charge of keeping us safe withholding scary information about our medications. The stuff we put into our bodies every day. So we’re going to do what the FDA won’t: tell you where our generic medications come from and the truth about the factories that made them.

Cenziper: That’s what we do as investigative reporters. We look under rocks for secrets. What’s not being...