"In this global drive, the companies, known as Mundipharma, are using some of the same controversial marketing practices that made OxyContin a pharmaceutical blockbuster in the U.S.
In Brazil, China and elsewhere, the companies are running training seminars where doctors are urged to overcome “opiophobia” and prescribe painkillers. They are sponsoring public awareness campaigns that encourage people to seek medical treatment for chronic pain. They are even offering patient discounts to make prescription opioids more affordable...
Former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner David A. Kessler has called the failure to recognize the dangers of painkillers one of the biggest mistakes in modern medicine. Speaking of Mundipharma’s push into foreign markets, he said, “It’s right out of the playbook of Big Tobacco. As the United States takes steps to limit sales here, the company goes abroad...
Untreated pain is a global scourge. Each year millions with terminal cancer and end-stage AIDS die in needless agony, according to the United Nations. The problem is most acute in the poorest countries.
Stefano Berterame, an officer of the U.N.-affiliated International Narcotics Control Board in Vienna, works to increase access to opioids in countries with shortages. He said most of the global problem could be solved with “very cheap morphine” but that selling it held little allure for multinational drug companies
“It’s not very profitable,” he said. “Companies prefer to market expensive preparations.”"
This is why people hate pharmaceutical companies. I've been thinking about this a bunch over the past few years, how we actually really need companies to commit resources if we want drugs available in large quantities, and before that we need them to commit a LOT of resources and trust to the long and uncertain development pathway, so there needs to be a clear financial incentive that makes the whole endeavor feasible.
But some companies abuse the system - or, rather, capitalism ruins everything. And then the whole class of companies is demonized.
But here is some hope: there are a lot of neuroscience researchers trying to use our basic biology and biochemistry knowledge to design non-addictive pain medication (if you want to know more, google "mu opioid receptors")
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