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Pharma Industry Still Making Absurd Profits From The Pandemic

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“Pfizer is projected to rake in more than $50 billion from its COVID medicines this year. ” [Source: jacobinmag.com]

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As this Jacobin article describes, with sales of $37 billion in 2021, Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has become the most lucrative medication in history. This year the company hopes to make $100 billion, an amount that is higher than the GDPs of most countries on Earth. But as the Jacobin article also points out, this income is built on the back of ruthless profiteering. Illustrating this, the sales price of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is said to be up to 440 percent higher than its cost price.

But Pfizer is hardly alone in such profiteering. In reality, the $1.5 trillion a year pharmaceutical industry is an investment industry that is driven by the profits it makes for its shareholders. Contrary to what many people still assume, improving human health is not its driving force. Maintaining the existence of diseases and increasing their incidence are preconditions for the pharmaceutical industry’s financial growth. The actual eradication of diseases is incompatible with and diametrically opposed to the long-term interests of drug companies.

To learn more about the unscrupulous business philosophy of the pharmaceutical industry, see the ‘Laws of the Pharmaceutical Industry’ feature on our website.