The biggest, multibillion-dollar companies are Pfizer (US), Novartis (Switzerland), Roche (Switzerland), Johnson & Johnson (J&J US), Merck & Co. (US), Sanofi (France), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK UK), AbbVie (US), Takeda (Japan), and AstraZeneca (UK-Sweden). The bulk of their profits come from prescription drugs. Big Pharma kills people in two ways: 1) pricing life-saving drugs out of the market and 2) aggressively marketing potentially dangerous products.
It often is cheaper for Big Pharma to break the law and pay fines than follow regulations that hinder profits. Every year at least one major drug company is fined for one or more of the following: bribery, drug safety, false claims, fraud, foreign corruption, off-label and unproven promotion, price-fixing, and violating consumer protection. Since 2000 in the US alone Pfizer has been fined by federal authorities 47 times totalling $4.4bn; Merck 42 times for $3bn; J&J 28 times for $3.4bn; Abbott 25 times for $2.3bn; Novartis 22 times for $1.2bn; and GSK 13 times for $3.9bn.
Profits are boosted by what Elaine Hollingsworth calls “the sickness industry.” Despite living longer, obesity, depression, dementia, increased cancer and other morbidities mean that Westerners are now less healthy than just a few generations ago. Big Pharma pathologises minor ailments and makes people dependent on drugs instead of encouraging the use of natural alternatives. The crisis of the industry’s influence over the medical profession, from reporting trial results to influencing doctors, prompted the British Medical Journal (BMJ) to launch a “Commercial Influence in Health Initiative” to expose Big Pharma’s deadly influence...<<<Read More>>>...
