For decades, the global pharmaceutical industry has been using a deceptive narrative that justifies the exorbitant and ever-increasing prices of medicines, vaccines and diagnostic tools as necessary and inevitable.
Our Access to Medicines Campaign has repeatedly criticized this misleading and dangerous narrative by calling for a access to affordable life-saving care, which gives priority to 
transparency on research and development costs and people's health instead of profits.
Nonetheless, Pharmaceutical corporations continue to fuel a number of myths about drug R&D costs and other pharmaceutical products to protect their profit-maximizing practices at the expense of people's lives.
A report from pharmaceutical financial investors asks: “Is treating patients a sustainable business model?”.
Here are some of their secrets, who would rather you didn't know:
1. Developing drugs isn't as expensive as they say
Big pharmaceutical companies inflate research and development costs for new drugs to justify their high price and often categorize “opportunity costs” and typically non-research activities, such as the acquisition of another company, as R&D costs.
While companies often say it costs about $2-3 billion to develop a new drug, other credible estimates speak of costs 10 times lower, in the order of 100-200 million dollars.
2. You pay twice for your meds
Pharmaceutical companies exploit government and university research laboratories for free, where most of the new medicines and technologies come from, that are public and financed with taxpayers' money.
They benefit from tax cuts and other financial incentives to de-risk their research investments, but then patent the resulting products and privatize the profits. And in the end they set high prices for taxpayers and governments.
3. Pharmaceutical industry innovation is very poor
About two-thirds of the new medicines that hit the market are not truly innovations they are structurally very similar to other molecules already known and present on the market.
Pharmaceutical corporations are making more efforts to develop so-called "me too drugs" (drugs that belong to the same pharmacological class and whose clinical benefits are substantially similar to those of molecules that have been available for some time) than to find real therapeutic breakthroughs.
4. Patents are repeatedly extended to prolong monopolies
A well-known company tactic is the “ever green” patent, according to which companies apply for additional patents on some small modifications of existing medicines in order to prolong their monopoly and block the market entry of low-priced generics.
5. Pharmaceutical companies blackmail developing countries that go against their interests
It happens frequently that pharmaceutical companies use pressure tactics or oppressive lawsuits against low- or middle-income countries such as India, South Africa, Thailand, Brazil, Colombia and Malaysia, which prioritize people's health over corporate interests.
Along with some rich countries, pharmaceutical companies try to influence the rules of international trade to benefit, even at the expense of public health.
6. Pharmaceutical companies make more money than they reinvest
Pharmaceutical companies say they need to make big profits to pay for research, development and innovation. But actually they spend more on sales, marketing, and stock buybacks necessary to support their stock market listings, than on research and development.
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