A much debatable book in recent time is Katherine Eban’s “Bottle of Lies” on the generic medicines produced mainly in India and China. There are different groups which are speaking against the book and are in opinion that facts are exaggerated in the book . But honestly is it intentional to defame these countries ? or culturally we failed to protect us because of different lacunas ,mindset of people to tell a lie and a culture of protecting our blunders. Blunder is a modest word actually correct word is the crime.
When we are dealing with life saving drugs ,are we failed to maintain our trust to speak and record failures? If we go through different warning letters in recent history it is evident that there were serious lapses in those companies and senior management in those companies failed to be transparent and adopted some shortcuts and hiding of facts.
Hiding of facts, inadequate investigations , unprofessional management , Finance conscious QA and fear of telling a truth leads for manipulations and manipulation always ends with loss of trust.
Can we say confidently that even our machine operator or supervisors says ‘NO’ for any adjustment, do we have a open and delegated work culture where people thinks they are working for society and patient safety. My answer is ‘No’. Reason may be cost pressure from senior management or self decision from middle management to proclaim as most efficient technocrats or a fear factor among root level which may trigger for masking the silt . Also some of senior management is not interested to accept a failure and links it with performance. Intolerance for failure is the key factor which is leading for such issues.
Now coming back to Katherine Eban ,I think writer is a conscious citizen and much concerned with the health safety of Citizen of US and if you read warning letters and kind of lapses found during recent audits, this shall be a natural reaction of a honest citizen.
If we loose transparency we loose trust and if we loose trust we loose our right to defend. So if some one says it is a bottle of lie we need to accept till we make a full transparent system to defend and argue that No my bottle full of trust.
No doubt many of Pharma Majors in India has come up to a level of excellence on transparency but still trust will come in its own way.
