What triggers scandals in the pharmaceutical industries?

Scandals leaving the most impact are linked to a death that could have been avoided. Therefore pharmaceutical industry understands their responsibility within our society. However, it is possible to compile a list of  common scandals within the pharmaceutical industry:

  • Pay ghost writers to publish medical journal while claiming that they are academics or doctors in order to persuade acceptance of the medicine in question
  • Ignore or cover up dangerous side effects while testing medicine in order to force introduction on the market
  • Marketing of medicine to people who do not need them, purely to maximise sales
  • Bribing doctors or hospitals to purchase more expensive medicine or favour theirs against those from competitors
  • Falsify sales figures to the government to make a bigger profit at the tax payers expense
  • Mismanagement leading to contamination during manufacturing or storage of medicine or distributing medicine to those not allowed to receive them

    When wondering why these scandals do occur, we can distinguish some reasons:

    • Ensuring that expensive research and development costs will ultimately result in high volume sales
    • Economic pressure from management or share holders, forcing short term gains to become more important than long term benefits
    • Implementing computer systems without proper validation and escalation procedures to avoid illegal business transactions

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