Skip to Primary Navigation

Tackling fraud in Big Pharma: Realistic ambition or pipe dream?

A crowd has gathered around a bottle of fake medicine in this advertising trade card printed in New York City around 1880.
A New York trade card warning of fake medicine, from the 1880s. Photo: Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images

Any suggestion of misleading clinical results, false advertising, or bribery to achieve medical approvals would clearly create massive negative publicity.

Big Pharma, and the life sciences sector more generally, has always been susceptible to corruption. In fact, Transparency International, the NGO working to end the injustices of corruption and promote transparency, accountability and integrity, published a report in 2016 identifying pharmaceuticals as standing out as a sub-sector that was particularly

With