You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: How Black and White thinking harms us all
I actually did work at a pharmaceutical company for 3 years (laboratory worker mostly) and I do have some insight on it. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Yes, pharmaceutical lobby is strong but most of the medications are actually good. We did mostly generical products (products which patents expired) but we also did all sorts of pills for Pfeizer, Bayer, etc. As an ex-pharmaceutical worker I have an opinion that everything that could help a human being survive is good in a subjective manner. (and our life itself is subjective - it is ours) Great article!
I have a similar background as yours. There's definitely a middle ground to find about the pharmaceutical industry, but i don't think that its SPECIFICALLY more evil than any other industry.
Big pharmas are useful for society and generally very efficient at what they do, but it's also true that some decisions (to discontinue the production of a drugs, to end a promising project because the market is too small...) are made out of pure greed. This is true for any tech industry (with planned obsolescence and its impact on the environment for example).
The real question here is: should health be just another industry following a capitalistic logic or should the dynamic and rules be different ? I don't have the answer but i think that's how we should consider the problem.