ABSTRACT
In the past five or six decades the progress made in humankind’s ongoing war against disease has been nothing short of remarkable. Illnesses which only 20 years ago were regarded as death sentences can often now be cured by swallowing a pill three times a day for a week or so and never missing a day of work while doing so. Our astonishing medical victories have occurred right across the healthcare spectrum, from heroic advances in surgery to modern insights into nutrition and huge technical advances in diagnosis, but it is broadly agreed that pharmaceutical corporations have played an enormous role in the ongoing war against disease. Indeed, this is so much the case that the names of some of the more famous pharmaceutical corporations, and of many of the remedies they have produced, have become household words worldwide.
