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OT: American Politics

Snippet from Derek Lowe, a dude who did a lot of work in the industry. Big Pharma is evil but the distrust placed in life saving products was always bizarre to me:

First off, I am simply not going to take on the "Big Pharma is evil and they deserve what's coming to them" point of view. Boy, can you find a lot of that one on social media, and I'm trying not to respond to all of it (although I have slipped a few times). So let me just say that I have not worked the past thirty-something years of my life to poison people, to keep them sick, or to bury cures so no one can find them. I have seen good friends, colleagues, and beloved members of my own family succumb to the very diseases that I have researched treatments for, and if I could have done something for them, I would have. I know it's fun for passionate activists and grandstanding politicians to pretend that that they're battling hordes of Vile Inhuman Pharma Fascists, but folks, it's actually mostly a bunch of people like me. That's not to say that we don't have some real bastards in this business, but guess what? So do you, in yours. We stock the buildings with people, and they're not all gems. I hate the Martin Shkrelis of the world as much as you do.
Big pharma is bad in the sense that they use a shit ton of money to buy politicians in order to keep affordable, single payer medical care out of the US so that they can make more money from the sale of their drugs. But Canadians also get their drugs from big pharma and it's fine because the government is able to negotiate on our behalf for a better price. Big pharma is no different than any other corporate monolith but if you have the proper regulation in place (or have the balls to implement regulation) then it's fine.
 
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