big pharma

See also: Big Pharma

English

Alternative forms

• Big Pharma

Noun

big pharma (uncountable)

1. (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.

Hypernyms

• big business

See also

• big government
• big money