Controversies Surrounding the Pharmaceutical Industry

The pharmaceutical industry has been entwined with perverse incentives throughout history.

All of the potential critiques of intellectual property

Regulatory capture is the process by which the entities being regulated by society's chosen regulatory structures take control of those structures. If done stealthily, this results in fooling society into a broad sense of safety while giving immense power to those doing the capturing. The pharmaceutical industry devotes a greater proportion of its budget to lobbying and marketing, which seems to have resulted in greater levels of regulatory capture than with most industries.

The pharmaceutical industry spends enormous amounts of money on advertising, paying for the lights to stay on at media outlets that would otherwise be counted on to inform the public about the state of the industry.

• Sample of Pfizer sponsorships of major media organizations.¹⁾

Many doctors, academics, and leaders have spoke out about pharmaceutical industry manipulation of government agencies, including those designed to police it.

• Former NEJM Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Marcia Angell discusses the endemic corruption in the pharmaceutical industry.²⁾

“In the early 2000s, based on Study 329, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) marketed Paxil (paroxetine) as safe and effective for children and adolescents when company executives were aware that a number of studies (all but Study 329 unpublished) had shown that the drug was no better than placebo and caused thought disturbance and suicidal behavior in some youngsters.”³⁾