Now that re-engineering foreign drugs is becoming illegal, local pharmaceutical companies are starting to invent their own.
In theory, companies could just manufacture drugs for foreign markets at plants that are not FDA-approved, thus rendering these drugs ineligible for reimportation to the U.S. market.
As the owner of Ranbaxy, Daiichi Sankyo now shares interests with other foreign makers of generic drugs.
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"The recent counterfeit incidents highlight vulnerabilities in the drug-supply chain and the possible health risk to patients if medical practices are choosing to buy unapproved drugs from a foreign supplier, " FDA spokeswoman Sarah Clark-Lynn said in an email.
Foreign companies have been slow to bring new drugs into Japan, because doing so requires expensive and cumbersome trials often duplicating those already carried out in other countries.
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Changes should "make explicit what is now implicit -- that foreign companies and individuals who manufacture or distribute drugs and drug components for use in the United States" are subject to the law, known as the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, Maher said.
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Specifically, the federal government should stop protecting the pharmaceutical firms that sell their wares more cheaply in foreign markets, only to block the entrance of those drugs into the U.S. This isn't to suggest for one second that Big Pharma shouldn't achieve the highest profits possible on its innovations, but it is to say that Americans shouldn't be forced to subsidize the consumption of foreigners.
The cost of developing new drugs, and the loss of income as cheaper foreign manufacturers have snapped up licence opportunities, has forced a huge cut-back in researchers.
Then, as health minister he took on two big foreign drugmakers, threatening to break the patents on their HIV drugs and getting them to cut their prices.
American politicians have long complained that Americans bear a disproportionate share of the cost of developing new drugs, that are then sold much more cheaply to foreign free-riders.
Meanwhile, in the equally critical healthcare sector, 79 percent of patents for pharmaceutical drugs or drug compounds were invented or co-invented by someone foreign-born.
But Novartis has argued that patent protection is necessary to reward foreign companies for the decades and billions of dollars that go into developing new drugs.
Others, like Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Sub-committee on Crime and Drugs, have recently complained about what they deem to be inadequate sentencing in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases.
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Although they occur in most cells, they crop up in particularly large numbers in cells of three kinds: those that move a lot, those that transport molecules in and out a lot, and tumour cells that are resistant to many different drugs (which are usually cells that are able to get rid of lots of foreign toxins).
The public's top foreign-policy goals (see chart) are preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, stopping the flow of illegal drugs into the country and protecting the jobs of American workers.
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