21 May 2020 - Big pharma is no longer the villain.
For much of the past two decades big pharma has been a lost cause. Despised by the public, it became notorious for price-gouging, secretiveness and its neglect of global health problems. Big pharma also lost its lustre with investors, despite its bumper profits.
They worried that a business model that relied too much on rent-seeking and too little on innovation was unsustainable, and that citizens would eventually revolt and demand more regulation—or even rip up the patent system that gives drugs firms a temporary monopoly over new medicines.