My personal rule of thumb is to try extremely hard to limit my prescription drug intake to generics only.

- I'm a cheapskate.

- It must have been around for a long time and in fairly broad use to be of interest to a generic mfgr. Long enough for the true safety profile to emerge in public.

- Profit margins are so thin that no mfgr will risk a ruinous lawsuit (cf. Vioxx) pushing garbage that has bad and not fully disclosed side effects.