The FDA does a pretty good job of forcing the offending companies to recall the bad product. They even go as far as banning any imports from said companies until they've proven that they have cleaned up their act.
Well... um. Read the Fortune article, and that pretty much invalidates your statement. This particular company was in the middle of an investigation and was still shipping product. Similar situations have occurred in the past (I can't recall names anymore though).
I would love to pull up an app, tap a few buttons, and ask the pharmacist to change the meds to brand name when they are selling me products produced by $sketchy_fraudulent_company.
I'm not saying the FDA does a good job of catching this activity early. The only way they find out is either through inspections (they are horribly understaffed) or through product complaints.
When do they find out they drop the hammer. Most (all?) Ranbaxy plants are banned from importing product into the US and many products were recalled.
Really? Articles from early 2014 say 4 plants are banned, while Ranbaxy's website boasts 21 manufacturing locations.
Sun Pharma, which is buying (or bought?) Ranbaxy, recently got a plant ban for the same types of issues. (They delete test info if it isn't in their favour, and have terrible hygiene at the labs.) It's obviously endemic. And Sun quickly noted that the ban only affects 1% of their revenue.
It seems unbelievable that this deep level of corruption is exposed, and the FDA does limited bans and recalls. Instead of, say, completely banning the company and high-level individuals involved, until a complete end-to-end audit is completed. It's simply counterfactual to think these limited bans are accomplishing anything, or that a company is going to utterly and completely change the way they conduct themselves from individual techs all the way up to the board.
The Fortune article says none of the FDA inspectors would ever personally buy drugs from Ranbaxy, ban or not.
Articles from early 2014 say 4 plants are banned, while Ranbaxy's website boasts 21 manufacturing locations.
Interesting, I looked it up and yes, the FDA is banning each plant separately. One could argue that the FDA can only ban the plants they find problems at, however, I would agree with you that Ranbaxy's behavior is bad enough to stop all shipments into the US. Not sure why the FDA decided to be more lenient. Maybe the law governing the FDA limits how far it can go? I don't know.
No, according to that article, the FDA can only (or only does) ban specific manufacturing facilities. So in Ranbuxy's case, even though it's clear the entire company is totally and utterly corrupt, with contempt for users and disregard for any semblance of proper engineering, they only got a few of their facilities closed. The fact that they were bought by Sun Pharma discredits that entire set of companies.
It's simply not possible to see how such a company can be redeemed; it's rotten to the core.
Is there a data source for companies & drugs that are known bad?