The film "Survival Desire" is very popular. It tells the story that Lu Yong imported cheap specific drugs from India, making it known as the God of Medicine by patients. However, Lu Yong was eventually arrested and imprisoned. Why did they choose to go to India to import cheap and specific drugs? There is a line in the play that says; ? People say that India is a pharmacy for the poor, so the whole world buys medicine here? . This is indeed the case in reality. India is the main source country of global generic drug production, and it can be seen that most generic drugs come from India in the market.
First of all, let's learn what a generic drug is. Patented drugs have a 20-year protection period. During the 20-year protection period, other enterprises are not allowed to copy. This is to encourage more enterprises to spend energy on researching new drugs. Generic drugs are drugs copied by other enterprises after the protection period. Generic drugs and patented drugs are exactly the same in safety, efficacy, function and quality.
1970, Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi advocated the adoption of the patent law, and local pharmaceutical companies benefited a lot. The revised patent law stipulates that in the future, only process patents will be granted to foods and medicines, and no product patents will be granted. This law opened the door to the production of generic drugs to a certain extent, and the Indian government also strictly controlled the prices of domestic drugs, which made many foreign products lose their markets in India. 1995 after India's accession to the WTO, in 2004, the Indian government issued compulsory patent licensing and restrictions on the authorization of some synthetic patents. As long as there are serious public safety problems, compulsory patent licensing and restricted compound patent authorization can be implemented in medicine, so that Indian pharmaceutical industry can continue to produce generic drugs.
From the example of India, generic drugs can really bring benefits to patients. Many patients can't survive because of the high cost of medicine. Although generic drugs have many advantages, too loose patent terms are not conducive to drug research and development. If everyone concentrates on producing generic drugs, who is willing to invest in research and development of new drugs?