This includes concealing effective treatments, perhaps even to the point of intentionally causing and/or worsening a wide range of diseases, in the pursuit of higher profits and/or other nefarious goals.
[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] According to Steven Novella, the use of terminology such as Big Pharma has come to connote a demonized form of the pharmaceutical industry, described in an emotional fashion, which exists disconnected from the real-life complexity of business history.
[5] Professor of writing Robert Blaskiewicz has written that conspiracy theorists use the term Big Pharma as "shorthand for an abstract entity comprising corporations, regulators, NGOs, politicians, and often physicians, all with a finger in the trillion-dollar prescription pharmaceutical pie".
[11] Research in Italy in 2016 found that nearly half the adult population believed that pharmaceutical companies hinder the development of effective medications to heal serious diseases, which according to the authors is a conspiracy theory, and that such beliefs were negatively correlated to mainstream religion while having anti-science and anti-elitism bases.
[15] Farber's theories and claims were refuted by scientists, but, according to researcher Seth Kalichman, the resulting publicity represented a breakthrough moment for AIDS denialism.
[21] Following the crash of Voepass Linhas Aéreas Flight 2283 in August 2024, social media posts appeared naming Leonardo Ferreira, a cancer researcher, as one of the passengers.
The Brazilian College of Radiology and Imaging Diagnosis published an obituary and conspiracy theories spread about how big pharma had engineered the supposed death of somebody close to finding a breakthrough cancer cure.
In the video, former research scientist Judy Mikovits spread the notion that "Big Pharma", Bill Gates and the World Health Organization led a conspiracy, in which they acted together as a "circular cabal" with the aim of killing Americans.
In the book Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About, author Kevin Trudeau claims that there are all-natural cures for serious illnesses including cancer, herpes, arthritis, AIDS, acid reflux disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, attention deficit disorder, muscular dystrophy, and that these are all being deliberately hidden and suppressed from the public by the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, and major food and drug companies.
Skeptic Benjamin Radford, while conceding there is "certainly a grain of truth" to these claims, notes that there are in fact papers critical of specific drugs published in top journals on a regular basis.
[3] A prominent example noted by Radford is a systematic review published in the British Medical Journal showing that paracetamol is ineffective for lower back pain and has minimal effectiveness for osteoarthritis.
[46] He estimated that if there were a big pharma conspiracy to conceal a cure for cancer, it would be exposed after about 3.2 years due to the sheer number of people required to keep it secret.