Bottle of Lies

The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom

By: Katherine Eban

Narrated by: Katherine Eban

Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

From an award-winning Fortune reporter, an explosive narrative investigation of the generic drug boom that reveals the life-threatening dangers posed by globalization - The Jungle for pharmaceuticals.

The widespread use of generic drugs has been hailed as one of the most important public-health developments of the 20th century. Today, almost 90 percent of our pharmaceutical market is comprised of generics, the majority of which are manufactured overseas. We have been reassured by our pharmacists, our doctors, and our regulators that the generic and brand-name drugs are identical, generics just cheaper. But is this really true?

Katherine Eban’s Bottle of Lies exposes the widespread deceit behind generic-drug manufacturing - creating terrifying risks for global health. Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistle-blowers, inspectors, and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential internal FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume adulterated medicine with unpredictable and even life-threatening effects.

The story of generic drugs is truly global: It connects middle America to sub-Saharan Africa, China, India, and Brazil and encompasses every market banking on the promise of a low-cost cure. Given that tens of millions of patients take drugs of dubious quality approved with fake data, the generics industry is the ultimate litmus test of globalization: What is the risk of moving drug manufacturing offshore, and is it worth the savings?

An investigation with international sweep, exotic settings, molecular mayhem, and big money at its core, Bottle of Lies reveals how the world’s greatest public-health innovation has become one of its most astonishing swindles.

©2019 Katherine Eban (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers

holy sh*t this is an eyeopener

extremely detailed reporting tells the story from the other side of the low cost generic Market. People have told me that the reason drugs are so cheap in Africa is that they are cheap to manufacture and in the United States we are suckers paying drug companies. Mow I know that those drugs sold in Africa may be made in somebody's house and maybe fully fraudulent due to lack of regulation.

Bottle of Lies Review

I had first come to know of this book when I listened to a podcast with Peter Attia and Elizabeth Eban-and knew that I needed to read this important piece of work. I hope to never ingest a generic drug or over-the-counter medication. How can they possibly be trusted? And shame on our lax FDA. Peter Baker got it right when he tattooed “integrity” on his arm. In a nutshell, scary!!! Everyone should read this book. The cost of producing a movie or mini-series of Bottle of Lies would be worthy of this book’s content. In so many way’s, integrity is missing from our world. Thank God for individual’s who embody integrity. Thank you to Elizabeth Eban, and all the individual’s she mentioned in her epilogue and acknowledgements-and the hero’s in the book. We need more Peter Baker’s in this world.

very informative and amazing narrative style

an eye opener to new aspects I thought previously irrelevant. The book is well written with fiction like thrill style. very good and useful book

Wow

I’ve worked in the medical research industry (specifically working for sponsor as an auditor at clinical sites) for 15 years and this book shook my confidence in what I know about the FDA. Incredibly well researched and well written. I almost wish I hadn’t read this books

NEVER BUY GENERIC DRUGS

Amazing Book

A well researched and excellently narrated the truth behind the Genetic Medicines and how Ranbaxy got into such a ness because of greed, lack of ethics and sadly none to regulate the Pharma industry. Scary too that the medicines that one takes may be fake and cause even death .

A must read for anyone who believes that Whistle Blowers do not tell lies but do not know whom to go to to expose the wrong.

Eye opening !

My heart is so heavy, after reading the current state of affairs of the pharma industry in India and China - its sickening to say the least. This book has been eye opening and I will now think hard before popping a pill. Thanks to the author for putting this complex piece of history in an understandable format. It was definitely longer than I'd have liked... but the information is far too important to skip. Would highly recommend to every individual everywhere in the world - your life may one day depend on it.

As a consumer of medication, this is a must read

This book is an exhaustive work and describes in detail the shoddiness occurring in the overseas generic drug trade, perpetuated by our own drug regulatory agency, the FDA. The too few regulators with lack of knowledge of the culture and language of overseas plants they were regulating, along with the innocent belief in the integrity of drug manufacturing officials has put sick people at grave risk. There has been an increase in cancer over the last few years -- has some of this been fueled by chronic medication laden with impurities? How many more persons besides the few cited in this book have succumbed to previously treatable disease because the medications have not had enough of the important active ingredient? And our own FDA's emphasis on diplomacy and funding over the regulation of bad drugs? I listened to this book in horror, wondering if there was a solution in the works, only to be disappointed at the conclusion. Many thanks to the author for her enlightening work. It reemphasizes (although never stated) the adage: Buyer Beware as well as a person's responsibility to maintain their own best health as long as possiible.

Rough start, turned around by the end

very dull, detailed opening but the second half of the book was much easier to follow and interesting. Learned some interesting things I'd not ever considered about generic drugs and the FDA review processes.

A Bathtub of Truth

I am one of those people who never thought to question the efficacy and safety of generic prescription medications. I was so wrong! In “Bottle of Lies” Katherine Eban reveals a bathtub of truth about the generic pharmaceutical industry. Everyone who takes a generic medication needs to read this book. Using the corruption and criminal cover-up at the highest levels of the now defunct Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited as a microcosm for exposing an entire industry, Eban has done for generic pharmaceuticals what Upton Sinclair did for the meat packing industry and Ralph Nader did for the Chevrolet Corvair. Whistleblower, Dinesh Thakur, emerges as the hero who exposed the dangers of the drugs produced by Ranbaxy and worked tirelessly for years with the FDA to stop the company from dumping ineffective and/or contaminated drugs onto the American market. As bad as it is here, it is worse in other parts of the world, especially in Third World Countries. If it were not for whistleblowers like Thakur, the efforts of a few dedicated FDA inspectors and investigators, a handful of nonprofit organizations, and legal professionals willing to accept the risk of going after multinational corporations more concerned with amassing wealth and power than with the production of safe and effective medications…none of us would have an ounce of protection. Given the bureaucratic bumbling and outright government complicity in some cases, I am still not sure that we do. The best advice is for the buyer to beware and to read this book before you purchase another bottle of lies.

WOW unbelievable I couldn't stop listening

It’s been a month since I finished this and still can’t stop thinking about it. We are very lucky to have Pharmaceuticals, however, I cannot express enough the value of this information so you can make informed decisions. This made me so angry at times and disgusted me with the FDA but also reminded me that I’m responsible for my own actions and welfare not some unknown face in a foreign country. Don’t wait!!! Start now making healthier changes to your life and do everything in your power to avoid or delay the need of pharmaceuticals as long as possible. Highly recommend… And thank you to the whistle blowers and reporter that put themselves in harm’s way to bring this to the public.