For decades, the global pharmaceutical industry has spread a deceptive narrative justifying the sky-high and ever-increasing prices of drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics as necessary and inevitable. The Access Campaign has repeatedly challenged this deadly narrative, calling for affordable access to lifesaving medicines, prioritization of people’s health over profits, and transparency around the research and development (R&D) process.
Yet pharmaceutical corporations continue to perpetuate a series of myths about the development costs and pricing of medicines and other health products in order to protect their profit-maximizing practices—at the expense of people’s lives. One pharmaceutical financial investors’ report even went as far as to ask, “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Here are some of the industry’s dirty, not-so-little secrets.