If you buy a Honda in North America, chances are the car was manufactured here. Having said that, Japan has a very high quality and innovative pharmaceutical industry and people shouldn't have any qualms about consuming their products, while considering the usual caveats about all drugs.

I don't see it so much on this board, but on the "Cholesterol Board" Pharma companies get bashed all the time. While I don't consider it my mission to defend them, some of the criticism generated is naive.

The advent of the generic drug industry has put lots of cost pressures on people who research and develop drugs. Some generic producers employ more lawyers than scientists, who "research" ways to exploit patents without infringing upon them. In other words, to get a generic version of a big seller to market without all of the costs that went into the original. This spawns a new industry of suppliers, with the huge growth in commodity ingredients being sourced in places like India and China.

In theory, this should be ok. A company hands the Indian or Chinese company a spec then asks for a bid. Presuming the technical capabilities of the supplier have been vetted and the price is right, the deal gets done. The question is whether these suppliers are sufficiently monitored. To increase monitoring and randomized testing would also increase prices and generics don't like that. They are, after all, sold on price.

One way to avoid it would be to limit the market to patent drugs and make all suppliers entirely responsible for the supply chain. That would have a disastrous effect on prices.

The US is the largest single market for pharmaceuticals and it is feeling more and more of an influence from free market capitalism with these prducts. I suspect that legislation will make it's way through Congress mandating additional "safeguards" on drug manufacturing. Unfortunately, we can be assured it will raise prices. The upside is that big box retailers have made many drugs available for a very low price.