The Difference Between Generic and Brand Name Drugs

Hello, I'm Dr. Neal Schultz and welcome to DermTV. I'm often asked, what's the difference between brand and generic medications, do they work the same? The short answer is sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. A brand medication is a medicine created, developed, and researched by a brand name pharmaceutical company like Merck or Pfizer. It spends many, many years in development and research and finally submits all of its evidence to the FDA to demonstrate that it’s safe, it’s effective, that it does this, it does that. It’s a very stringing process. After about 18 years, the patent prunes out. And then a generic drug manufacturer can copy or attempt to copy the same drug to do the same thing provided as the same active ingredient. It has to have the same active ingredient but all of the other ingredients in the pill can be different. And as a result of that, sometimes they work the same, and sometimes they work differently. However, both pills, both the generic drug and the brand drug will have the same active ingredients. But let me give you an example. For Christmas you decide to send the same beautiful belt to 2 friends, and you buy it 2 different stores. And the shipping departments at those 2 different stores pack it differently. One store packs it with soft, smooth packing and puts it in a waterproof cardboard box. And the other company puts in sharp angular packing that’s not soft and wraps it in a very thing cardboard box. And of course being delivered to your friends, both of these boxes that bounced around and get rained on and so on and so forth. And as a result, one of the gifts arrives in pristine condition and the other one arrives with nits and scratches and water stains. Doesn’t always happen but that can happen if their packaged differently. The same thing really applies to generic and brand medications. Again, the active ingredients are the same. However, the coloring agents maybe different. The emulsifiers may be different. The fillers may be different. The preservatives may be different. And the binders which hold it all together may also be different. And then may be their differences in other ingredients, there you go, also can result to injury. The generic medication, well it has to have the same active ingredient, doesn’t have to have the same amount. It can be anywhere between 75-100% of the quantity in the brand medication. Sometimes they work the same, and sometimes they don’t. I, for one, prefer brand medications for myself. Please join me again at dermtv.com. If you have a question, please send it to me by visiting dermtv.com/question. I'm Dr. Neal Schultz and thank you for watching today.