Book Review: ‘The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India’ by Dinesh S. Thakur and Prashant Reddy T.

Published : Jan 26, 2023 10:25 IST Truth, they say, is a bitter pill to swallow. The Truth Pill by Dinesh S. Thakur and Prashant Reddy is replete with bitter truths about India’s drug regulatory architecture, which calls for some soul-searching by policymakers. The authors argue that the manufacturing and the quality of life-saving drugs and medicines are an issue of public health and that the pharmaceutical industry’s role is not just to pivot India as “the pharmacy of the world”, a moniker that has stuck because of its emergence as the largest producer of generic drugs. The book enumerates the issues that contribute to poor outcomes in public health—such as the approval of dubious new drugs with little or no evidence of their therapeutic claims; the refusal to upgrade regulations for generic drugs to guarantee therapeutic equivalence with the innovator drug; and the manner in which drug inspectors move around the law to avoid the prosecution of pharmaceutical companies. In Chapter 11, titled “The Politics and Levers of Reforming India’s Drug Regulatory Framework”, the authors try to offer alternatives for a viable and credible regulatory framework.