And they're usually as effective. They can cost half as much as a name brand. D., clinical coordinator for drug information for the Department of Pharmacy at Johns Hopkins Hospital . Generic drugs are as safe and effective as brand-name products, and subject to the same quality guidelines set by the Food and Drug Administration to ensure their therapeutic equivalence. They're not inferior.
People mistakenly believe cost is equivalent to quality.
Generic drugs must contain an identical amount of active ingredients as their brand-name counterparts, and in the identical dosage. The generic drug must deliver the same amount of those active ingredients into a patient's bloodstream and within the same time frame as the original drug. So besides price, the only real difference between brand-name and generic drugs tends to be the inactive ingredients used that have no medicinal value. These include fillers, binders, coloring and flavoring, which may explain why generics may differ in the size or shape of pills or capsules. Their manufacturers must bear the up-front costs of researching and developing the drug, a process that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars.