Big Pharma conspiracy theories

Big Pharma conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories that claim that pharmaceutical companies as a whole, especially big corporations, act in dangerously secretive and sinister ways that harm patients. This includes concealing effective treatments, perhaps even to the point of intentionally causing and/or worsening a wide range of diseases, in the pursuit of higher profits and/or other nefarious goals. The general public supposedly lives in a state of ignorance, according to such claims.

Some theories have incorporated the assertions that natural, alternative remedies to multiple health struggles are being suppressed, that medications for the treatment of HIV/AIDS are ineffective and harmful, that an effective cure for all cancers has been discovered but concealed from the public, that vaccines for COVID-19 are ineffective, and that alternatively understood cures exist for COVID-19 itself. In most cases, the conspiracy theorists have blamed pharmaceutical companies' search for increased profit margins. A range of authors have shown these claims to be false, though some of these authors nevertheless maintain that other criticisms of the pharmaceutical industry are legitimate.[1]

History and definition

According to Steven Novella, the use of terminology such as Big Pharma has come to connote a demonized form of the pharmaceutical industry, described in an emotional fashion, which exists disconnected from the real-life complexity of business history. Professor of writing Robert Blaskiewicz has written that conspiracy theorists use the term Big Pharma as "shorthand for an abstract entity comprising [sic] corporations, regulators, NGOs, politicians, and often physicians, all with a finger in the trillion-dollar prescription pharmaceutical pie".

According to Blaskiewicz, the Big Pharma conspiracy theory has four classic traits: first, the assumption that the conspiracy is perpetrated by a small malevolent cabal; secondly, the belief that the public at large is ignorant of the truth; thirdly, that its believers treat lack of evidence as evidence; and finally, that the arguments deployed in support of the theory are irrational, misconceived, or otherwise mistaken.[2]

In the 1970s and 1980s, the conspiracy theory was promoted by Ann Wigmore who held that diseases, including cancer and HIV/AIDS, could be effectively treated with a raw food diet. In this context, Wigmore believed that the pharmaceutical industry was part of a conspiracy to keep the population at large ill.[3]

André Picard

Manifestations

The conspiracy theory has a variety of different manifestations. Each has different narratives, but they always cast "Big Pharma" as the villain of the piece.[2]

Reception

A common claim among proponents of the conspiracy theory is that pharmaceutical companies suppress negative research about their drugs by financially pressuring researchers and journals. Skeptic Benjamin Radford, while conceding there is "certainly a grain of truth" to these claims, notes that there are in fact papers critical of specific drugs published in top journals on a regular basis.[39] A prominent example noted by Radford is a systematic review published in the British Medical Journal showing that paracetamol is ineffective for lower back pain and has minimal effectiveness for osteoarthritis.[39][40]

In his 2012 book Bad Pharma, Ben Goldacre heavily criticises the pharmaceutical industry but rejects any conspiracy theories. He argues that the problems are "perpetrated by ordinary people, but many of them may not even know what they've done".[41]

Steven Novella writes that while the pharmaceutical industry has a number of aspects which justly deserve criticism, the "demonization" of it is both cynical and intellectually lazy.

See also

• Bad Pharma, a 2012 book by British physician and academic Ben Goldacre
• Big Pharma, a 2006 book by British journalist Jacky Law
• Evil corporation
• Homeopathy
• List of conspiracy theories
• List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
• Lobbying
• Pharmaceutical lobby
• Pharmaceutical marketing
• Vaccine hesitancy
• Vaccine resistance activism

Further reading