Bottle of Lies: Ranbaxy and the Dark Side of Indian Pharma

Bottle of Lies: Ranbaxy and the Dark Side of Indian Pharma
on Nov 13, 2019

The back cover of the book says, “Welcome to a world where cancer patients are sold contaminated chemotherapy drugs, where cholesterol medication has shards of glass in it and a blood-pressure pill contains a live bug. This is no nightmare. This is the ugly truth of Indian pharma.” Bottle of lies is about the ugly side of both Ranbaxy and the US Pharma Patent system. Author Katherine Eban has cleverly used Ranbaxy as a symbol to show the whole of Indian pharma as a villain while not giving space to corrupt US pharma patent system and related individuals of the USA any prominent coverage on the cover of the book. It also covers the dark side of some shameful practices of the Indian pharma industry and the institutions and individuals associated with it. The story starts in 2004, Dinesh Thakur, a senior employee of Ranbaxy, then India’s largest pharma company discovered a terrible secret. Ranbaxy had been fabricating the test results of their drugs, endangering millions of patients. Thakur resigned and became a whistleblower to the US Food and Drug Administration, one of the regulators Ranbaxy had been lying to, and ultimately brought the multibillion-dollar behemoth to its knees. This is the sensational account of the high stakes chase to bring Ranbaxy to book and the fall from grace of one of corporate India’s biggest success stories. But the rot in Indian pharma isn’t confined to Ranbaxy alone. The story is the result of the well-researched work of the author. She relies on over 20,000 FDA documents and interviewed over 240 people in a study spread over 2014 to 2018, across continents.  The book also raises troubling questions about some of its biggest names – Wockhardt, Dr. Reddy’s, Glenmark and RPG Life Sciences.