Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom - Katherine Eban - ★★★★.¾

AUTHOR: Katherine Eban

GENRE: Investigative Nonfiction

RATING: 4.75 stars.

Everyone knows the lack of ethics in India. Corruption pervades the public and private sectors, and even the most conscientious of citizens can barely escape this now-routine fact of our lives.

I had always assumed that certain sectors might still be sacrosanct because of their very nature of their existence. Right now though, after reading this book, I'm terribly depressed and worried and have lost almost all hopes about reform in this country.

Bottle of Lies is an exposé by US investigative journalist Katherine Eban about the generic drug industry, its boom and its flaws. Ranbaxy is its primary target, viewed through the eyes of Dinesh Thakur, the whistle-blower who made public the deep-rooted unethical corruption within the company.

Though the book primarily focuses on Ranbaxy, the list of companies Eban has named with actual instances of malpractices contains the who's who of the Indian Pharmaceutical sector: Dr. Reddys, Zydus Pharma, GSK Pharma, Wockhardt, Glaxo Smithkline, Cipla. Glenmark, Aurobindo, Sun Pharma... The names and the malpractices perpetrated leave you astounded.

Eban's narrative is fast-paced and leaves you breathless. You feel like you're reading a scary dystopian thriller instead of some boring documentation of a whistle-blower's experience. All tactics used by the Indian cheats are mentioned: repairing instead of replacing faulty equipment, falsification of data, shifting employees temporarily to a department to show the adherence to minimum required staff numbers, lack of testing as per norms, circumventing the truth constantly by using loopholes, lack of documentation, making different versions of the same drug for different markets,... Things that you wouldn't ever expect of reputed multinational companies! She even mentions "Jugaad" and "Chalta Hai" as two inherent problems in Indian corporate mentality because of which companies work around a problem rather than working on it. (A small part of me was even waiting for "Jhol" to make an appearance, but I was disappointed by its being missed out!)

Obviously, Eban also focuses on FDA and the struggles it faces wrt lack of understanding of medical jargon, low number of agents willing to travel abroad for checks and their need to balance US Congress requirements of cheap medical availability with medicinal integrity. The first half is almost panegyric of FDA. But the second half of the book reveals even their problems of corruption and bureaucracy. (That was a teeny saving grace: to know that even American institutions struggle with bureaucratic pressures and delays.)

If I have to nitpick, I can say that the book does have a lot of white supremacy, especially in the first half. American FDA investigators are portrayed in the veil of ethical cowboys out to (metaphorically) kill the bad generic pharma guys. The Indian culprits are openly criticised. But the Britisher Brian Tempest, who was the Ranbaxy CEO during the debacle, is only mentioned by name and without any character flaws detailed. Additionally, there are too many physical descriptions of the Americans, right down to the colour of their eyes, which to me was unnecessary and distracting.

A slightly bigger irritant for me was the complete lack of acknowledgement of the problems that even Indian citizens face with these cheap drugs dumped here. About 90% of the book is totally about the US citizens and their rights, with one chapter focusing on Africa. Still, I suppose this is partly understandable as both Eban and the FDA are American and their loyalties would obviously lie there.

These, however, are just trivial issues coming from the heart of a disgruntled and shamefaced Indian. The above flaws don't take away anything from this masterful eye-opener.

A caveat though: Read the book at your own risk. You'll never look at medicines the same way again. The book will create depression and enhance pessimism.