Medications
Generic or brand-name drugs?
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Ask the doctor
Almost always, the generics prove identical. But there have been a few examples in which the generic drug was not equivalent-at least until a problem in the manufacturing process was corrected. So, I can't tell you absolutely that any generic you try will always work just as well as the brand-name version—just that it almost always will. Of course, any medicine will only work if you take it. And many studies have found that people are less likely to take brand-name drugs than the generic equivalents. Presumably, this is because the brand-name drugs cost more. So some doctors argue that generic drugs actually are more likely to produce positive health effects than brand-name drugs. A committee of experts convened by the American College of Physicians has recently reviewed all of the evidence on this question, and their conclusions are like mine.
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