An Industry Divided

The pharmaceutical industry is just that: an industry.  Along with drug discovery and development, those in pharma are also responsible for business aspects such as marketing, finance, and competition with other pharmaceutical organizations.  While pharma has a bad reputation for being corrupt, my opinion is that the industry as a whole is not corrupt, but its members who have impure intentions may be.

Drug discovery and development are essential for disease management as we know it today.  With the high prevalence of many chronic disorders, the continuing survival of bacterial and viral infections, and the emergence of new illnesses and disease states, many people are dependent on the pharmaceutical industry constantly researching and developing treatments to maintain their health and quality of life.  I believe that the professionals who are dedicated to research, drug development, and drug discovery truly do have the best interests in mind for patients.  Therefore, I fully support the efforts of these individuals, and although this side of pharma can come at high costs, this is what is necessary to develop appropriate, efficacious drugs to improve overall health outcomes.  Another related issue that I am not sure how I feel about yet is the outsourcing of manufacturing and development of drugs to other countries (and to be frank, I don't really know a lot about this so if one of you could enlighten me that would be great!).

However, I believe that some departments in the pharmaceutical industry are not fully committed to patient care and health improvement, and may have other intentions that tend to be selfish or corrupt. For instance, the business and finance side of pharma requires that the companies are able to be financially stable and competitive across the industry.  This may cause them to raise drug prices or make other business decisions that negatively impact patient access to the drugs or other aspects of the patient care intent to drug development.  Additionally, there are always people whose greed overrides their sense of humanity, and these are the people whose actions reflect most poorly on the pharmaceutical industry.  For instance, Martin Shkreli of Turing and Heather Bresch of Mylan were two CEOs whose decisions caused their drugs to be astronomically overpriced and unavailable to patients.  As high-up members of the business side, these two did not have the direct responsibility of drug research, development, or patient care, and thus did not concern themselves with the health-related consequences of their decisions.  In this regard, I believe that the pharmaceutical industry could be improved greatly to prevent attempts at unnecessarily maximizing profit at the expense of patient care.