Document of the week | The influence of pharmaceuticals dissected

One suspects by reading its title that Big Pharma, all-powerful labs does not boast of the scientific innovations of the giants of the pharmaceutical industry. The French documentary focuses on practices which demonstrate, according to its authors, that these companies are less interested in health and the common good than in short-term profit.

Let’s say it upfront: people who already suspect the pharmaceutical industry of manipulating public policy and trying to siphon off as much money as possible from health care systems will especially feel comforted in their ideas by looking at Big Pharma, all-powerful labs. The film directed by Luc Hermann and Claire Lasko seeks to demonstrate how the financial power held by the giants of the sector gives them a major influence on the organizations responsible for monitoring them, but also on the public policies of a sovereign country.

What is at stake here is “the total financialization of the drug ecosystem”, specify the documentarians from the introduction of their film. A situation illustrated by the reminder of a scandal that occurred in 2015, when an investment fund led by financier Martin Shkreli bought the marketing rights in the United States of Daraprim, a drug used in particular by people suffering from diseases incurable like AIDS and malaria (malaria).

In the wake of this transaction, he increased the price of this drug by 5000%. No improvement has been made. He was able to afford it, because he had judged – apparently rightly – that “in health, the evolution of prices has little effect on the level of demand”. “What my investors want is for me to make maximum profit,” he also added at the time.

This system that the documentary dissects BigPharma is dominated by five giants: Novartis, Roche, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi. Powerful companies which, denounce the documentary filmmakers, benefit more from the acquisition of small innovative companies than from their own research. The logic of financial capitalism being short-term profit, these patents acquired with millions must be profitable quickly.

“The prices of drugs no longer reflect the real costs of research,” said a speaker from the documentary, who works at the New England Journal of Medicine. She also points out that, very often, pharmaceutical companies manage to privatize profits, while the research that has enabled the development of drugs has benefited from public funds.

BigPharma also looks at the aggressive way drug giants are defending their market share by giving the example of two drugs used to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD): Avastin – originally developed to fight colon cancer – and Lucentis. Noting that the French health system favored the use of Avastin, much less expensive than the other, Roche and Novartis led a campaign to promote Lucentis. The case caused a stir in France and led the Competition Authority to impose a fine of 445 million euros on the two pharmaceutical companies in 2020.

The film by the two French documentarians is enough to fuel cynicism towards pharmaceutical companies, which some accuse of manipulating health authorities such as the American Food and Drug Administration and even the World Health Organization. We can blame BigPharma lack of nuance, but the film has the merit of raising important questions about the funding of research, the drug approval process and the excesses of financial capitalism applied to the field of health.

We regret that it ends in 2019, as the COVID-19 pandemic begins. Another film may one day recount the race for a vaccine against this devastating virus, the strategies deployed by the pharmaceutical industry and those put in place by health authorities to inform and protect populations.

Wednesday, 8 p.m., on Télé-Québec