English

Alternative forms

• Big Pharma

Noun

big pharma ‎(uncountable)

1. (business, pejorative, sometimes capitalized) Large, prosperous pharmaceutical firms collectively, understood as a business group having significant economic, political, or social influence.
   • 1994 Sep. 26, "Biotech," BusinessWeek (retrieved 10 Oct 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?," 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’, Literary Review, issue 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.

See also

• big business
• big government