full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Katherine Eban: A dose of reality about generic drugs

Unscramble the Blue Letters


I decided to learn every detail of how to manufacture a laigiettme generic drug. At a top New Jersey lab, I watched as technicians ran tests on specialized machines and used flasks that mimic sactomh conditions to measure drug dissolution. But one remarkable fact jemupd out. The lab banned Wite-Out — correction fiuld — across its facility. Under FDA rules, data serves as the cornerstone of quality. It has to be gathered at each mcunfuantiarg step, psvrreeed and seahrd with regulators. Wite-Out was high-risk. It invited tmaneirpg. It was clear that for the FDA's rarlgeotuy regime to succeed, any company applying for approval had to be ethical, and its data had to be unaltered. But what if neither was true? What if the applicant was not ethical? What if the data was not pristine?

Open Cloze


I decided to learn every detail of how to manufacture a __________ generic drug. At a top New Jersey lab, I watched as technicians ran tests on specialized machines and used flasks that mimic _______ conditions to measure drug dissolution. But one remarkable fact ______ out. The lab banned Wite-Out — correction _____ — across its facility. Under FDA rules, data serves as the cornerstone of quality. It has to be gathered at each _____________ step, _________ and ______ with regulators. Wite-Out was high-risk. It invited _________. It was clear that for the FDA's __________ regime to succeed, any company applying for approval had to be ethical, and its data had to be unaltered. But what if neither was true? What if the applicant was not ethical? What if the data was not pristine?

Solution


  1. regulatory
  2. legitimate
  3. preserved
  4. manufacturing
  5. stomach
  6. jumped
  7. shared
  8. fluid
  9. tampering

Original Text


I decided to learn every detail of how to manufacture a legitimate generic drug. At a top New Jersey lab, I watched as technicians ran tests on specialized machines and used flasks that mimic stomach conditions to measure drug dissolution. But one remarkable fact jumped out. The lab banned Wite-Out — correction fluid — across its facility. Under FDA rules, data serves as the cornerstone of quality. It has to be gathered at each manufacturing step, preserved and shared with regulators. Wite-Out was high-risk. It invited tampering. It was clear that for the FDA's regulatory regime to succeed, any company applying for approval had to be ethical, and its data had to be unaltered. But what if neither was true? What if the applicant was not ethical? What if the data was not pristine?

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
generic drugs 7
generic drug 6
public health 3
peter baker 3
dollar refill 2
bad drugs 2
fda investigator 2
consumer organizations 2


Important Words


  1. applicant
  2. applying
  3. approval
  4. banned
  5. clear
  6. company
  7. conditions
  8. cornerstone
  9. correction
  10. data
  11. decided
  12. detail
  13. dissolution
  14. drug
  15. ethical
  16. facility
  17. fact
  18. fda
  19. flasks
  20. fluid
  21. gathered
  22. generic
  23. invited
  24. jersey
  25. jumped
  26. lab
  27. learn
  28. legitimate
  29. machines
  30. manufacture
  31. manufacturing
  32. measure
  33. mimic
  34. preserved
  35. pristine
  36. quality
  37. ran
  38. regime
  39. regulators
  40. regulatory
  41. remarkable
  42. rules
  43. serves
  44. shared
  45. specialized
  46. step
  47. stomach
  48. succeed
  49. tampering
  50. technicians
  51. tests
  52. top
  53. true
  54. unaltered
  55. watched