Ranbaxy fiasco
The very fact that Ranbaxy is hiring Giuliani to fend on its behalf in its imbroglio with USFDA makes me suspect their credentials. The intro on Giuliani Partners’ site was the ultimate piece of mokkai I’ve come across in recent times. Businessweek had covered the Ranbaxy issue , before the issue hit headlines.
What caught my attention was this.
Ranbaxy denies any wrongdoing. The company counters that it made changes recommended by the audits, and that the audits themselves are protected by attorney-client privilege. On Aug. 3, Ranbaxy turned over some documents to the FDA.
Manufacturing mess-ups do occur in the big bad world of pharma worldwide. A cursory glance through http://drug-injury.com reveals quite a bit. It is not confined to third world countries or one particular manufacturer.
But perceptions are a completely different beast. A wrongdoing by a US Pharma company will always be seen as a wrong doing by that company in that plant, while a failure by Ranbaxy will quickly translate to ‘India companies are always like this’ type generalizations. Anything manufactured in India is by default viewed as cheap, and of poor quality simply because it is from India. And to be honest, we have done very little to rectify that perception. I am sure Japanese car manufacturers would’ve faced the same issues sometime back. Look where they are now!
At this point, it looks like Ranbaxy has acted like one of those irresponsible brats I had mentioned in my previous post. At a time when Indian pharma companies are gearing up to move to the next level in the CRAM space (Contract research), acts like these by biggies like Ranbaxy brings a lot of bad press and pushes the whole industry and the country behind by a few notches.