An advantage of having several related drugs on the market is that patients and doctors have the option of trying several compounds to obtain the compound with the fewest adverse effects and best therapeutic efficacy in individual cases, although we suspect that this does not often happen. Me-too drugs can be useful in cases of an adverse reaction to an excipient in another drug formulation. (British Pharmaceutical Society Journals)

About 60 percent of the World Health Organization’s listed essential medicines, for example, are me-too drugs, and estimates of the number of new drugs approved by the FDA have been as high as 75 percent. (Center of American Progress)

On the other hand, the more differentiated me-too drugs are from pioneering drugs, the greater their potential benefits, and the less they harm the incentives for pioneering research. (Research Gate)