Big Pharma conspiracy theories

Big Pharma conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories that claim that pharmaceutical companies as a whole, especially big corporations, act in dangerously secretive and sinister ways that harm patients. 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. The general public supposedly lives in a state of ignorance, according to such claims.^[1][2]

Some theories have incorporated the assertions that natural, alternative remedies to multiple health struggles are being suppressed, that medications for the treatment of HIV/AIDS are ineffective and harmful, that an effective cure for all cancers has been discovered but concealed from the public, that vaccines for COVID-19 are ineffective, and that alternatively understood cures exist for COVID-19 itself. In most cases, the conspiracy theorists have blamed pharmaceutical companies' search for increased profit margins. A range of authors have shown these claims to be false, though some of these authors nevertheless maintain that other criticisms of the pharmaceutical industry are legitimate.^[3]