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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Are these drugmakers located in China?

I'd take Chinese manufactured drugs if it breaks the current hegemony. I already buy stuff from India from sketchy online pharmacies, having some semi-trustworthy body providing any oversight would be a an improvement.

You know that these sketchy pharmacies are run by gangsters who have bumped people off (source bbc world service) and also do nice things like sell HIV drugs to poor Africans that don't contain enough of the active agreement

I would not. They had the melamine-in-baby-formula incident, in some regions they have poisoned tap water, and corruption is omnipresent. I‘m too selective about what I put into my body to take any chances there. Eg if they don’t filter water, pills might contain lead.

The US has poisoned tap water in some regions, too.

This is xenophobic nonsense. China executed or sentenced the executives behind the melamine debacle to life in prison, so there's already been greater accountability than we'd see for the same supply line issues in the US.

Flint, Michigan has lead-poisoned tap water.

Look at the salmonella cases that pop up every few years and kill handfuls of people. Look at the infants accidentally being given methadone prescriptions. There's never any real consequence for mishaps in the US. Maybe a fine at worst.

Likely not. It'll most likely be India as they are the largest generics manufacturing nation by far. India is to generic drugs what we are to non-generics. Israel is another major generics manufacturer so it could be them. China's pharmaceutical market haven't developed as quickly because of their internal chinese medicine market.

Correct.

Even American generic manufacturers get a large percentage of their APIs from India. Surprise surprise, weak patent laws mean you get pretty good at making complex things.

The bulk mass-produced excipients/binders/“fillers” often come from China, since that’s what they’re good at.

Pressing tablets and packaging them is fairly commoditized work. The extra cost of doing it in the USA won’t make a perceptible difference to the end-user.

QC is easier when you’re working with verified pure ingredients.

I’m much more worried about food made with imported ingredients than drugs made with imported ingredients.

When a 500k tablet per hour rotary press can be tended to by a person or two and do its thing, labour costs aren’t very relevant.

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