"Our healthcare system isn’t about health—it’s about business." Big Pharma's immoral business model.

Helping people choose to stop being victimized by predatory profiteers. A vast curation of verifiable evidence that the medical monopoly isn't healthcare; it's corporate psychopathy.

Goldman Sachs analysts attempted to address a touchy subject for biotech companies… “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” analysts ask in an April 10 report… “While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.”

CNBC

For Big Pharma, there is no financial incentive to heal you, because a patient cured is a customer lost. Even if you are not sick, Big Pharma is still targeting you, trying to convince you that you are ill so that you will try its latest pill.

Baxter Dmitry

Big Pharma already owns the regulators so proper monitoring of side effects is rare. When investigations do happen, they are usually perfunctory — even the most toxic drugs never lead to jail time and any fines are only a small percentage of profits. “Cause the harm, treat the harm” is a vastly more profitable business model than cures. Causing harm increases profits by 100x or more (a single injury can produce a lifetime of profitable treatments). Said simply, causing harm and disease massively increases the size of the market for pharmaceutical products so that’s Big Pharma’s business model today.

Toby Rogers

Drug makers rarely cure disease, but they show a profound level of professional expertise in selling sickness.

Ace Cassels

Contents

1. Big Pharma & Biotech Defined

2. Immoral Business Model: Introduction

3. Immoral Business Model: More Evidence

4. How the U.S. Came to Be Strangled by Monopolized Medicine and Big Pharma

5. Context: See how this subject fits in the bigger picture, and get links to related topics

Big Pharma & Biotech Defined

The phrase “big pharma” refers to the wealthy and powerful corporations that develop and sell pharmaceutical drugs, including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott, Merck & Co., Eli Lilly and Company, and Biogen among others. The term biotechnology or “biotech” is basically synonymous with big pharma:

The biotechnology industry is composed of hundreds of companies that fuse biology and technology to develop drugs and related products for the treatment of diseases and medical conditions. Today’s biotechnology industry includes companies that make medical devices and diagnostics, biofuels, biomaterials, pollution controls, and more. Among the largest companies in the industry are those researching and producing pharmaceutical solutions. – Investopedia

Big pharma is big business:

• “As of 2021, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry has a market size of $560 billion. Over 4.76 billion retail prescriptions were filled in the U.S. in 2022.” [source]

• “The largest pharmaceutical company in the U.S. is Pfizer, with a revenue of $100.33 billion.” [2023 source]

• Institutional investors hold more than two-thirds of Pfizer’s corporate shares. The top three institutional shareholders are Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. [source]

• The top three institutional shareholders of Moderna are Baillie Gifford & Co., Vanguard, and BlackRock. [source]

Immoral Business Model: Introduction

17 min – Mar 21, 2025, Sharyl Attkisson, award-winning journalist, provides a clear, compelling, and verifiable history of the shift from journalistic integrity to mainstream media’s compliance with Big Pharma’s agendas

40 min – Jul 15, 2017 – “Former CEO of Eli Lilly & Co Exposes Big Pharma Corruption”, Dr. John Virapen, 35 years as an executive of Eli Lilly & Co

More From Pharma Whistleblower, Dr. John Virapen

The former managing director of drug giant Eli Lilly and Company in Sweden continues to blow the whistle on the business practices of the pharmaceutical industry, scoring a major victory in announcing that his first book, Side Effects: Death. Confessions of a Pharma-Insider, will be turned into a full-length feature film. John Virapen, who began his career with “Big Pharma” in 1968 as a salesman knocking on doctors’ doors, rose through the ranks to realize what he was pitching were not drugs, but death. Virapen was well aware early on that thousands had died or committed suicide by taking the drugs he was pushing. “I indirectly contributed to the death of . . . people, whose shadows now haunt me,” he explained in his book. Spending nearly 30 years pushing Big Pharma’s wares onto doctors, who would then push them onto an unsuspecting, trusting public, Virapen made millions dealing drugs, crisscrossing the globe in the hopes of convincing healthcare professionals to use his company’s products, even when he knew they were unsafe. – Aug 30, 2014

15 min – Aug 29, 2023, In the first 3 minutes, Peter Berg explains the evidence of corruption in the FDA approval of OxyContin

After the tragic and unexpected loss of my husband Woody to the antidepressant Zoloft that he was prescribed for insomnia, I was thrust into a world I never imagined—one where medicine wasn’t solely about healing, but deeply entangled in a system that prioritizes profit over safety, buries harms, and keeps the public in the dark.

For over two decades, I’ve had a front-row seat to how this system truly operates—not the illusion of rigorous oversight we see in medical journals or glossy pharmaceutical ads, but the reality of how industry influence is woven into every stage. I’ve met with regulators, testified before the FDA and Congress, filed a wrongful death and failure-to-warn lawsuit against Pfizer, and earned a seat on the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee…

Our healthcare system isn’t about health—it’s about business.

Kim Witczak

Pharmaceutical Criminality is Pervasive

Barely a month goes by without some pharmaceutical company in court, somewhere. Criminal convictions are common and fines tally into the billions. You’d think this would be well-known in the medical profession. It isn’t. – Dr. Julie Sladden MD

85% of Big Pharma Companies Studied Were Fined for Illegal Activity; The Hurdles Required to Get to the Point of Fining Pharma are Beyond Difficult

A 2020 peer-reviewed article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association… studied both the type of illegal activity and financial penalties imposed on pharma companies between the years 2003 and 2016. Of the companies studied, 85 percent (22 of 26) had received financial penalties for illegal activities with a total combined dollar value of $33 billion. The illegal activities included manufacturing and distributing adulterated drugs, misleading marketing, failure to disclose negative information about a product (i.e. significant side effects including death), bribery to foreign officials, fraudulently delaying market entry of competitors, pricing and financial violations, and kickbacks… Many of the Big Pharma players are repeat offenders.

Prosecuting these companies is no mean feat. Cases often drag for years, making the avenue of justice and resolution inaccessible to all but the well-funded, persistent, and steadfast. If a case is won, pharma’s usual response is to appeal to a higher court and start the process again… Taking these giants to court requires nerves of steel, a willingness to surrender years of life to the task, and very deep pockets. For every conviction, there are countless settlements, the company agreeing to pay out, but making no admission of guilt. A notable example is the $35 million settlement made, after 15 years of legal maneuvering, by Pfizer in a Nigerian case that alleged the company had experimented on 200 children without their parent’s knowledge or consent. – Big Pharma’s Rap Sheet

Immoral Business Model: More Evidence

1. By Design, Corporations are Legally Beholden to Profit, Not to People or the Planet — “Pfizer and Other Sociopaths… The world’s dominant institution [the corporation] is essentially psychopathic, being amoral and without conscience. A YouTube documentary is based on his book. Bakan shows that corporations not only put… profit above everything else, they are bound to do so (at least, in the United States) by law.” See also: What a $2 Million Per Dose Gene Therapy Reveals About Drug Pricing: “A Record Price: The gene therapy Zolgensma helped children born with a fatal disease, spinal muscular atrophy, grow up to run and play. But the cost was stunning: $2 million per dose. Cashing In: While taxpayers and small charities funded the drug’s early development, executives, venture-capital backers and a pharma giant have reaped the profits. Priced Out: The drug’s cost adds to the nation’s ballooning bill for prescription drugs and puts Zolgensma out of reach for kids in many low- and middle-income countries.”

2. Big Pharma Monopolistic Control Extends to Regulatory Agencies and University Research Journals — And media covrage. And medical school training. And what is prescribed by doctors and used in hospitals. See also: The Pharmaceutical Industry’s Role in U.S. Medical Education See also: CNN Exclusive: The more opioids doctors prescribe, the more money they make See also: Ex-CBS Reporter Reveals How Big Pharma Took Over the News Media See also: Big Pharma have paid UK healthcare organisations £404 million during 2020-2022: “There is little detail about what these payments relate to except that they do not relate to research and development activities.” See also: Big Pharma Pays Universities for Most Medical Research in U.S. Today: “More than half of medical research funding in the U.S now comes from pharmaceutical companies, which exceeds funding of research by the National Institutes of Health.”

3. The Creators of the Opioid Epidemic Obtained a Patent to Treat the Result of their Drugs: Addiction Treatment — “The massive increase in opioid sales and subsequent addiction rates have been traced back to an orchestrated marketing plan aimed at misinforming doctors about the drug’s addictive potential. Sackler family members who own Purdue Pharma were intimately involved in the false advertising of OxyContin. An investigation revealed the Sacklers also own Rhodes Pharma — one of the largest producers of generic opioids. Dr. Richard Sackler — who was deeply involved in the marketing of OxyContin — was awarded a patent for a new, faster-dissolving form of buprenorphine, used in the treatment of opioid addiction, thus making money both on the promulgation of addiction and its treatment… Please don’t trust your doctor if he hands you this. He may have perfectly good intentions, but he’s been hoodwinked by one of the slickest marketing plans of the past century. Make no mistake, this epidemic is no random fluke.” See also: Opioids have killed 600,000 Americans. The Sacklers just got off basically scot-free.

4. Pharmaceuticals are Patented to Assert Monopolistic Control, in Contrast to Traditional Medicine Systems that Use Widely Available, Inexpensive, Natural Remedies — “Patent protection for chemical and pharmaceutical products is especially important compared with other industries because the actual manufacturing process is often easy to replicate and can be copied with a fraction of the investment of that required for the research and clinical testing.”

5. Big Pharma Patents Molecules, Compounds & Technologies, and Then Looks for Diseases Against Which Their Patents Can be Applied — “Many have reflected on the fact that Big Pharma has a perverse incentive to promote ill health, as its financial bottom line depends on it. But few understand just how elaborate its efforts to that end are.” Bret Weinstein offers evidence that “Big Pharma patents molecules, compounds and technologies, and then looks for diseases against which their patents can be applied. Pharma is engaged in a continuous effort to portray its intellectual properties as more useful and safer than they are, and to persuade the medical establishment, journals, medical societies, hospitals and government to direct people toward drugs they wouldn’t otherwise be taking.” The article is referring to this video interview.

6. The Law Protects Big Pharma Rather than Protecting People Seeking Remedy for Harm from Big Pharma Drugs — “Preemption is a legal defense employed by pharmaceutical companies, which argues that federal law supersedes state law. Essentially, a manufacturer will argue that, if a drug has received approval from the FDA (a federal agency), they cannot be sued at the state level for allegations of drug defects or insufficient warnings about potential side effects. This defense hinges on the presumption that the FDA’s approval process is comprehensive and rigorous, considering all potential risks and benefits of a medication… A clear illustration of the effects of preemption… comes from the case of Singulair… Following the patent expiration of Singulair in 2012, the drug and its generic versions were prescribed to millions of patients. A significant portion of these patients were minors, reflecting the drug’s widespread usage in managing pediatric asthma and allergies… In the early years, the drug’s label claimed that its distribution in the brain was minimal, with no mention of psychiatric side effects. However, over the years, concerns started to rise regarding potential neuropsychiatric side effects, including suicide and suicidal thoughts. Despite these concerns, Singulair and its generic versions continued to be widely used, with the FDA only ordering its most severe “black box” warning in 2020… [The drug’s effects]… spurred numerous lawsuits, with many plaintiffs alleging that the drug manufacturer minimized the potential for psychiatric problems in statements to regulators. However, due to preemption, many of these lawsuits have faced significant hurdles.”

7. “Trust in Pharma, Hospitals Plummets: Gallup Poll” — “Significantly less than half of respondents thought pharmaceutical companies provided good care, while little over half thought physicians did.” See also: Trust in Doctors and Hospitals Plummets [Brownstone Institute, Sep 5, 2024]

Concealing Evidence of Harm in Trials and Poor Manufacturing Practices

Evaluations since the 1960s have found 85-90% of new drugs have few advantages… Many are under-tested for harmful effects… Most research and development (R&D) appears devoted to developing scores of minor variation drugs… Alleged violations that increase adverse side effects include: 1) concealing evidence of harm in trials, 2) unlawful promotion for unfounded uses, 3) physician & hospital kickbacks, and 4) poor manufacturing practices. – University Prof. Donald W. Light

Big Pharma Priority: Seeking Contracted, Recurring Sources of Business

A massive expansion for Big pHarma… The proposed “Pandemic Agreement” is a corrupt business deal that is not designed to improve the health of people. It is designed to increase the wealth of greedy special interest lobbyists… The core purpose of the proposed “Pandemic Agreement” is fraudulent. “Equitable access to pandemic related products” will NOT prevent future pandemics. – James Roguski

Bribing Doctors

A 2018 survey published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that nearly three out of four doctors have financial ties to Big Pharma. The vast majority of these relationships were with representatives of prescription drug or medical device manufacturers. Gifts included drug samples, meals, and payment for consulting or advisory roles. Since 2013, federal law has required that payments to doctors by medical device and pharmaceutical companies be publicly reported. The database (which you can access here) has published over 11.5 million records between August 2013 and December 2017, reflecting $8.4 billion in gifts and payments. – Ty & Charlene Bollinger

This subject is covered in depth in Establishment Medicine: Verifiably Corrupt above.

How the U.S. Came to Be Strangled by Monopolized Medicine and Big Pharma

By the turn of the 20^th century, John D. Rockefeller controlled 90% of the oil refineries in the US through his company Standard Oil, becoming America’s first billionaire… In 1911, Standard Oil was ruled by the US Supreme Court to be an illegal monopoly in violation of antitrust laws and forced to break up. Like his father, John D. Rockefeller had built his success on illegality, cons, and scams… At the time, chemicals made from oil, known as ‘petrochemicals,’ were being discovered and developed in the US. This included the discovery that pharmaceutical drugs could be made from oil, which Rockefeller saw as an opportunity to expand his empire. The key was that petrochemicals, unlike natural health remedies, could be patented, presenting an enormous opportunity for Rockefeller profits. There was only one problem – at the time, natural, herbal, and traditional medicines were very popular in the US. Something like half of the doctors and medical colleges in the country were using holistic medicine, natural remedies, and knowledge taken from Indigenous Native Americans. Rockefeller needed a way to eliminate the competition, to create a monopoly in medicine as he had done with oil. And so, he went to his good friend Andrew Carnegie… Together, the two men hatched a plan to take over American medicine.

From the cover of the Carnegie Foundation, they would send a man named Abraham Flexner around the country to report on its medical colleges and hospitals. After visiting all 155 medical schools existing at that time in the US and Canada, he completed the seminal Flexner Report in 1910. Following the directions of his employers, Flexner called in his report for a total restructuring of the American medical system, most specifically, for the pushing aside of natural and traditional remedies in favor of Rockefeller pharmaceuticals. The report even specifically mentioned the eradication of “dissidents,” appropriately, since this is exactly what happened. Almost immediately after the report was issued, medical schools teaching things like naturopathy, homeopathy, electromagnetic field therapy, and so on, were told to drop these things or close. More than half of all medical colleges in the country did close, and many non-compliant doctors were demonized and even jailed. [continue reading here]

How Rockefeller Monopolized Medicine and Created Big Pharma

Context, Organized Curation

This article is a subset of a vast resource curation on the failure and corruption of establishment medicine. Select from the links below (or see here for the entire curation on a webpage with jump-to links).

1. Failed Health Outcomes — The U.S. spends nearly twice the per-capita amount on healthcare than the next highest spender, yet Americans are the most chronically ill, and rank 48th in life expectancy, among other countries. In addition, medical misdiagnosis causes permanent harm and death to 795,000 people every year.

2. Verifiably Corrupt — Establishment medicine as a system* is verifiably corrupt, serving the interests of industry — not health. (*Obviously, not every individual working in establishment medicine is unethical. Rather, the system that educated / indoctrinated them, and that sets policy, hires, pays, and promotes them is verifiably corrupted.)

3. Big Pharma & Biotech : Immoral Business Model — Corporations, by design, are beholden to profit above all else, acting as powerful entities that are “essentially psychopathic and without conscience.” Pharmaceutical and biotech companies are the utmost example of corporate psychopathy, demonstrating inhumanity in response to human suffering.

4. Regulatory & Professional Betrayal — Government agencies entrusted to regulate the field of medicine fail to do so. The majority of influential professional organizations such as the American Medical Association are corrupted by industry.

5. Not Evidence/Science-Based — The bulk of establishment medicine’s standard of care is not based on unbiased, reproducible science. (We prove it here.)

6. Harms, by Drug & Diagnostic — Establishment medicine providers routinely utilize diagnostic testing and “treatments” that cause harm (“adverse”, “side” effects). Get verifiable evidence of the harms, organized by drug, treatment, or test (mammograms, CT scans, antibiotics, statins, benzos, etc).

7. Corrupt & Failed Philosophy & Strategies — Establishment medicine (also called Rockefeller medicine) was created to exploit the profit potential of drug patents. Born from a compromised report published in 1910, this system does not acknowledge the conditions under which the body creates health, nor does it seek to identify and resolve the root causes of illness. On the contrary, it suppresses symptoms with drugs, creating more symptoms and distracting efforts from true healing. Diagnosis is disconnected from the wisdom inherent in the purpose and message of symptoms.

8. Stifling Providers & Treatments That Don’t Enrich Industry — Healing modalities that don’t benefit industry are underutilized, suppressed, and disparaged. Providers who are perceived as a threat to establishment dictates or lucrative markets are condemned, intimidated and attacked. See also: Suppressed Cancer Research and Cancer Reversal Testimonials

9. The Significance of Legal Precedent — Legal precedent, breach of duty, and “standard of care” are significant factors in the state of the medical industry.

10. Alternatives & Considerations — Alternatives, considerations, and what you can do.

11. Sources by Date — Summary of sources and resources, in order of publication date.

See Also

• Root Causes of Illness — With knowledge of causal factors, true healing is possible. Quickly identify drugs, vaccines, and toxins that cause each illness or symptom (e.g. cancer, depression, infertility, kidney issues, seizure, etc).