WHEN I WAS IN LAW PRACTICE, WE HAD A CASE INVOLVING THIS PROBLEM: Those Generic Drugs May Not Have Been What You Thought They Were: Years of abuses at Ranbaxy raise worries about the FDA’s oversight of the generics market.

This is the week for arguments I have previously dismissed coming back to bite me. I’ve already admitted that I dismissed tea party complaints about extra IRS scrutiny because really, who would do that? Now along comes another story that is causing me to reassess my priors: it turns out that Indian generic giant Ranbaxy has been selling generic “drugs” that didn’t actually work.

Complaining that generic drugs from abroad are nothing but cheap fakes has long been a staple of free-trade opponents, and of course, pharmaceutical manufacturers trying to protect their products from foreign competition. While it’s long been clear that there was some truth to the horror stories–don’t buy drugs on the internet, okay?–I’ve been pretty dismissive of complaints about Indian generics giants like Ranbaxy and Cipla. These guys are huge companies with brands to protect. Moreover, they’re inspected by the FDA. Why would they risk it all by adulterating their product?

Well, the fact is they did, and the answer is presumably “to save money.”. . . Yes, Ranbaxy eventually got caught. But for years, they sold drugs of uncertain quality. It’s hard to say how many people they killed, but it’s unlikely that the number is zero, or even near-zero.

See, that’s a problem.