Maria Garipov, Period 7, 10/3/22

 Maria Garipov PD 7 10/3

Socio-political Consciousness -

Big Pharma

There is a huge issue in the sincerity of big pharmaceutical companies. We were all

taught growing up that medication is necessary in the vast majority of the public’s lives, and that

there are companies that make these medications to help us. However in reality, our health is not

the biggest concern of these companies, money is. The pharmaceutical industry stands

unchallenged in its ability to dictate government health policies, and it's shocking and scary to

find out that they are not on our side. The biggest concern with these Big Pharma companies is

shareholders, not patients.

A prime example of this abuse of power is seen with a man named Martin Shkreli.

Shkreli is a manager of hedge fund investigating in health products, and he had bought the rights

to the drug Daraprim in 2015. Daraprim is on the world health organizations model list of

essential weapons for disease, and it is used as a tool in fighting Malaria, and a dangerous

infection caused by HIV. Shkreli had bumped up the price of Daraprim overnight from $13.50 to

$750, which is a 5000% increase. The public was outraged, and rightfully so. There was no

reason for this dramatic price change, except for money. When Shkreli was asked in an

interview if he would have done anything differently, he had said he would have raised the price

higher. He was also seen in front of the U.S. congressional committee, laughing at the questions

being asked and constantly pleading the fifth. It is very clear that Shkreli was unapologetic for

this absurd price change, and that he was simply soulless. It’s not surprising that a little while

later Martin was arrested by the FBI and convicted in front of a federal court for securities fraud.

Even since, the price for Daraprim has never returned to its original $13.50. Although this

horrible experience had harmed many many people, the one positive thing we can get out of this

is the public now understanding more the cynicism of Big Pharma.

Big Pharma can be described as the handful of big pharmaceutical companies that

manufacture the vast majority of drugs. These companies include Novartis, Pfizer, Johnson &

Johnson, Roche, and Sanofi. Most of these companies are making an annual turnover of at least

$40 billion dollars. To maintain their monopoly on certain diseases, big laboratories have been

accused of playing down or hiding the results of their clinical trials, causing very dangerous

situations. For example, the drug Depokine, which is an epilepsy treatment, that is produced by

Sanofi. Depokine is one of the worlds most widely distributed drugs in the last 50 years, and has

become the center of a health scandal in Europe around 2003. It had been found to be very

dangerous for the babies of pregnant women, causing intellectual and motor development

disorders in up to 40% of cases, and deformities in 10%. However, this was nowhere stated on

the packaging, and not known by doctors for 50 years after the drug came out. And this was not

the doing of the company itself seeing its mistake, but by the result of many years of being sued.

It is even more upsetting to find out that the lab had written in 2003 that it had been aware of the

issues since 1970, but thought that the risks were slight so they were never communicated. It is

incredibly messed up that drug companies can get away with things like this, just because they

want to maximize their products. This scandal had ruined the potentially healthy lives of tens of

thousands of children.

There are many more similar cases to the ones covered here, and it seems like there is

nothing we can do to stop them from happening. Big Pharma companies understand their power

over the public, and they choose to abuse it, putting millions of lives at risk just so they can

profit off of our capitalistic society as much as they can. I had even seen this myself, with the

price of my own medication being incredibly high if not for my insurance, which I also

understand is not accessible to everyone in the US. I myself even had no medical insurance for a

year or so of my life, and had been told to just power through any illnesses or injuries, because of

the absurdly high prices of the medical industry. The Big Pharma industry disgusts me and more

people need to be informed on the cynicism of these companies.