Welcome to Sisyphus Highway: In Depth.

After tracing different paths of generic-drug development in the United States, India, and China and the formation of legal, patent, and regulatory systems, we place these abstract questions in a concrete case.

Using American investigative journalist Katherine Eban’s Bottle of Lies, we enter Ranbaxy, once an Indian generic-drug giant. Over ten years, Eban traveled across four continents, interviewed more than two hundred people, and reviewed extensive regulatory, government, and internal corporate documents to trace problems hidden from the public in generic manufacturing, approval, and oversight.

Following Ranbaxy’s rise, fraud, and investigation, we examine practical difficulties in generic-drug regulation. We also return to Bottle of Lies itself to discuss how investigative reporters use people, documents, and years of pursuit to help ordinary readers enter a world with high professional barriers.

 

- Bottle of Lies: a ten-year global drug investigation

- Tents in the FDA parking lot: why did drug companies race to be “first”?

- The FDA bribery case: who regulates the regulator?

- Why are multinational drug factories so difficult to supervise?

- The Titanic principle: when risk strikes, why do some suffer greater harm?

- “There is always a market somewhere that will accept it”: where do low-quality drugs go?

- Ranbaxy: how did an Indian generic giant systematically falsify data?

- From a four-page report to a twenty-four-slide deck: how was Ranbaxy’s fraud discovered?

- Destroyed evidence, anonymous reports, and surprise inspections: how did a multinational company’s problems surface?

- A guilty plea and a $500 million fine: how did the years-long international investigation end?

- How do the Chinese and English editions of Bottle of Lies differ?

- Why do we still need investigative journalists and nonfiction?