Nisticò, modest savings from a recipe with an active ingredient.
Only "modest savings" would be obtained by forcing white coats to prescribe the active ingredient and not the designer drug. And the freedom of the doctor is harmed. The pharmacologist Giuseppe Nisticò, Italian member of the European Medicines Agency (Emea), 'rejects' the measure to encourage the use of generics and reduce pharmaceutical expenditure, proposed several times by the president of the Antitrust Antonio Catricalà, and which in many they hope it will be included in the Senate in the Budget. The obligation to include only the molecule in the recipe “does not produce major advantages – he underlines – except in limited cases. The Italian Medicines Agency, in an intelligent way, already obliges companies to lower the price of reimbursable specialties if there is a generic on the market. Medicines – he is keen to remind us – are not just any product: they are a health tool, not an economic one. If the generic is not of the highest quality, with strict controls on production and composition, it can derail the therapy, causing enormous damage”. And in fact Nisticò, when he was a European parliamentarian, had presented an amendment to the new legislation on drugs which “aimed at reducing the number of companies producing generics. Companies that must be subjected to careful checks”, says the expert, recounting that the EMEA has recently withdrawn some generics from the market. He doesn't go too far, but specifies that "when the EMEA takes such decisions, all European countries are affected, including Italy". In any case, "mine is not a war on 'non-designer' drugs - he concludes - but I don't see any real advantages from the obligation to prescribe only the active ingredient". From Doctronews 11-27-06
