According to the FDA website: “FDA’s review process ensures that generic medications perform the same way in the human body and have the same intended use as the name brand medication. Health care professionals and consumers can be assured that FDA-approved generic drug products have met the same rigid standards as the innovator drug. All generic drugs approved by FDA have the same high quality, strength, purity, and stability as brand-name drugs.”7 But this assurance to the American public is useless if doctors and patients can’t be sure these standards are enforced. In the case of generics, which are so prevalent, these must be equivalent to the brand-name drugs in dosage, effectiveness and safety.  This matters enormously because if the contents of a drug don’t precisely match the listed ingredients, then the person taking that drug is at risk of:
Not receiving enough of the drug to be effective
Taking in the drug at a level that could be toxic or harmful
Taking in ingredients not listed, potentially causing an allergic reaction or consuming ingredients that are not approved for human use
Taking in substitute ingredients that have a similar effect but are cheaper and potentially not indicated for your condition
In database research done recently by Bloomberg, the media outlet speculated that generics for Cialis, Viagra, and Lipitor might have been in the fraudulent Synapse group because their therapeutic equivalence rating was changed during the window of time that fit the Synapse alert.