Of the many emails I get every day asking about buying generic Hepatitis C medicines one of the frequently repeated questions is:
“How do I know that these meds are not fake?”
Along with this question is usually a comment about having read an article about fake or counterfeit medicines coming out of India.
So I thought I should re-visit this topic and just explain a couple of basic points.
Firstly I have been involved in helping people buy generic Hepatitis C medicines since May 2015, when they first became available from India.
In that time I have helped many thousands of people to buy generic Hep C meds from India and in that time I have never heard of even one person who has purchased fake or counterfeit generic Hep C medicine from India, not one.
Now having said that I will also say that I have heard of counterfeit Hep C meds being sold, but not from India and not counterfeit generic Hep C meds.
Let me explain why.
To set up the production of counterfeit medicines is not a simple thing.
First you need a pill press that will produce an exact replica of the pill you are counterfeiting, with identical imprint and shape and colour etc.
Next you have to have the same bottle, the same label, the same box, the same user’s instruction sheet and so on.
Of course all of these things can be done but it involves time and expense. So if a person is going to make counterfeit Hep C meds they are not going to make counterfeit generic meds they are going to make counterfeits of the expensive brand versions of the medicines. They will make counterfeit Harvoni, counterfeit Daklinza, counterfeit Epclusa and so on.
You ask why?
Because the cost of making a counterfeit bottle of Harvoni is exactly the same as making a counterfeit generic. So why counterfeit a product that sells for $1,000 when for exactly the same expense you can counterfeit a product that sells for $84,000!
That is why people make counterfeit RayBan sunglasses but do not make counterfeit versions of cheap brands of sunglasses that you can buy at a discount store.
If you are going to make counterfeit money then you make a fake $20 note not a fake $1 note because the cost of making the fake is the same.
So people making counterfeit drugs do not make counterfeit versions of the cheapest drugs on the market, generics, they make counterfeits of the most expensive.
It is that simple.
So why is there such a thing in everyone’s mind about buying fake Indian generic Hep C treatment? Click here to read this article in its entirety as well as the rest of Greg’s blog...
