The Clear Labels Act Would Change What You Know About Your Prescription Medication
This is performative politics again.
Senators introduced legislation on Thursday that would require prescription drug labels to identify where the medication was made, adding momentum to a yearslong campaign to bring more transparency to the often elusive generic drug industry.
At a hearing last week, members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging criticized manufacturers for routinely concealing the locations of their drugmaking plants as well as the suppliers that provide key ingredients. ProPublica described this lack of transparency — and how it was enabled by the Food and Drug Administration — in a series of stories that found the agency had quietly allowed troubled foreign drugmakers to continue selling generic medication to unsuspecting Americans.
The Clear Labels Act, introduced by committee chair Rick Scott, R-Fla., and ranking member Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is meant to help patients, doctors and pharmacists know more about the drugs they use and prescribe. Current labels often list only a distributor or repackager of a medication and sometimes provide no information at all. The proposal calls for labels to disclose the original manufacturer as well as the suppliers that produced their key ingredients. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., also signed on to the proposed legislation.
“Every American deserves honesty and transparency about what they are putting into their bodies,” Scott said. “It is wholly irresponsible that we’re living in the dark when it comes to where our medicines are made.”
ProPublica had to file public records requests and sue the FDA in federal court to obtain information about where generic drugs are made and whether government inspectors had flagged those factories for safety or quality concerns. ProPublica ultimately created a first-of-its-kind tool that empowers consumers to find the information themselves.
Ninety percent of the prescriptions in the United States are for generics, many of them manufactured overseas. For patients and their doctors, identifying where medication was made and the safety records of those factories had been nearly impossible until now.
Rx Inspector, the tool ProPublica introduced late last year, includes factory location information and inspection histories when available for nearly 40,000 generic drug products. Doctors, patients and researchers say they are already using it to better understand where medication comes from and to find more information when a generic causes unexplained health problems.
The Clear Labels Act would require manufacturing location information on packaging for brand-name drugs as well as generics.
Ohio State University professor John Gray, who testified at the hearing, suggested that packaging could include a QR code linking to the data on a website. Gray is working to assign quality scores to specific versions of generic drugs and said the code would allow patients and doctors to easily find those scores while researching medication and their manufacturers.
“Low-quality drugs have human consequences,” Gray said.
Gray said he is using Rx Inspector to fuel his work, which is funded by the Department of Defense. The tool, he said, …
This is performative politics again.
Senators introduced legislation on Thursday that would require prescription drug labels to identify where the medication was made, adding momentum to a yearslong campaign to bring more transparency to the often elusive generic drug industry.
At a hearing last week, members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging criticized manufacturers for routinely concealing the locations of their drugmaking plants as well as the suppliers that provide key ingredients. ProPublica described this lack of transparency — and how it was enabled by the Food and Drug Administration — in a series of stories that found the agency had quietly allowed troubled foreign drugmakers to continue selling generic medication to unsuspecting Americans.
The Clear Labels Act, introduced by committee chair Rick Scott, R-Fla., and ranking member Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is meant to help patients, doctors and pharmacists know more about the drugs they use and prescribe. Current labels often list only a distributor or repackager of a medication and sometimes provide no information at all. The proposal calls for labels to disclose the original manufacturer as well as the suppliers that produced their key ingredients. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., also signed on to the proposed legislation.
“Every American deserves honesty and transparency about what they are putting into their bodies,” Scott said. “It is wholly irresponsible that we’re living in the dark when it comes to where our medicines are made.”
ProPublica had to file public records requests and sue the FDA in federal court to obtain information about where generic drugs are made and whether government inspectors had flagged those factories for safety or quality concerns. ProPublica ultimately created a first-of-its-kind tool that empowers consumers to find the information themselves.
Ninety percent of the prescriptions in the United States are for generics, many of them manufactured overseas. For patients and their doctors, identifying where medication was made and the safety records of those factories had been nearly impossible until now.
Rx Inspector, the tool ProPublica introduced late last year, includes factory location information and inspection histories when available for nearly 40,000 generic drug products. Doctors, patients and researchers say they are already using it to better understand where medication comes from and to find more information when a generic causes unexplained health problems.
The Clear Labels Act would require manufacturing location information on packaging for brand-name drugs as well as generics.
Ohio State University professor John Gray, who testified at the hearing, suggested that packaging could include a QR code linking to the data on a website. Gray is working to assign quality scores to specific versions of generic drugs and said the code would allow patients and doctors to easily find those scores while researching medication and their manufacturers.
“Low-quality drugs have human consequences,” Gray said.
Gray said he is using Rx Inspector to fuel his work, which is funded by the Department of Defense. The tool, he said, …
The Clear Labels Act Would Change What You Know About Your Prescription Medication
This is performative politics again.
Senators introduced legislation on Thursday that would require prescription drug labels to identify where the medication was made, adding momentum to a yearslong campaign to bring more transparency to the often elusive generic drug industry.
At a hearing last week, members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging criticized manufacturers for routinely concealing the locations of their drugmaking plants as well as the suppliers that provide key ingredients. ProPublica described this lack of transparency — and how it was enabled by the Food and Drug Administration — in a series of stories that found the agency had quietly allowed troubled foreign drugmakers to continue selling generic medication to unsuspecting Americans.
The Clear Labels Act, introduced by committee chair Rick Scott, R-Fla., and ranking member Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is meant to help patients, doctors and pharmacists know more about the drugs they use and prescribe. Current labels often list only a distributor or repackager of a medication and sometimes provide no information at all. The proposal calls for labels to disclose the original manufacturer as well as the suppliers that produced their key ingredients. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., also signed on to the proposed legislation.
“Every American deserves honesty and transparency about what they are putting into their bodies,” Scott said. “It is wholly irresponsible that we’re living in the dark when it comes to where our medicines are made.”
ProPublica had to file public records requests and sue the FDA in federal court to obtain information about where generic drugs are made and whether government inspectors had flagged those factories for safety or quality concerns. ProPublica ultimately created a first-of-its-kind tool that empowers consumers to find the information themselves.
Ninety percent of the prescriptions in the United States are for generics, many of them manufactured overseas. For patients and their doctors, identifying where medication was made and the safety records of those factories had been nearly impossible until now.
Rx Inspector, the tool ProPublica introduced late last year, includes factory location information and inspection histories when available for nearly 40,000 generic drug products. Doctors, patients and researchers say they are already using it to better understand where medication comes from and to find more information when a generic causes unexplained health problems.
The Clear Labels Act would require manufacturing location information on packaging for brand-name drugs as well as generics.
Ohio State University professor John Gray, who testified at the hearing, suggested that packaging could include a QR code linking to the data on a website. Gray is working to assign quality scores to specific versions of generic drugs and said the code would allow patients and doctors to easily find those scores while researching medication and their manufacturers.
“Low-quality drugs have human consequences,” Gray said.
Gray said he is using Rx Inspector to fuel his work, which is funded by the Department of Defense. The tool, he said, …
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