About Pharma and Big Pharma

Abstract

The text discusses the trajectory of the global pharmaceutical industry towards becoming what is currently called Big Pharma. Also presents the configuration of the Health Industrial Complex and exposes its economic and political dimensions. It suggests as essential determinants of the transformation of the global pharmaceutical industry into Big Pharma the processes of financialization of the global political economy and the harmonization of the intellectual property regime carried out by the World Trade Organization through the TRIPS agreement. Furthermore, it discusses the microeconomic changes that have occurred in the companies’ production process. Finally, it points out that this trajectory is part of the process of weakening multilateral representation built after the Second World War during the 1990s.