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English
Noun
big pharma (uncountable)
- (business, derogatory) Large, prosperous pharmaceutical firms collectively, understood as a business group having significant economic, political, or social influence.
1994 September 26, “Biotech”, in BusinessWeek, retrieved 10 October 2013:"Biotech's only got about $1.5 billion in partnering funds today, but big pharma is spending $25 billion in R&D" each year with marginal results, notes Burrill.
2006 June 19, Daniel Williams, “Drugs Before Diagnosis?”, in Time:Critics were indignant that a potentially dangerous drug was being used on a hunch, and suspected the influence of big pharma and its drive to expand its markets.
2012, James Le Fanu, “Bitter Pills to Swallow”, in Literary Review, number 399:The driving force, and substantial beneficiary, of this mass medicalisation is of course the pharmaceutical industry, or Big Pharma as it has pejoratively become known.
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