as always been problematic. On the one hand, no other industry has provided as many benefits to humankind. It supports basic biological and medical research at universities throughout the world, even though it has not always stood to immediately profit from this research. It has developed products which are in demand by relatively few patients who are afflicted with rare diseases and has supplied them at little or no profit. On the other hand, it has financially profited from its work like almost no other industry. Health and well-being are in such demand that a market can be found for almost every product the industry produces.
It must be remembered that the industry itself is comprised of many independent corporations, each looking out for its own well-being. Thus, they are in competition with each other for profits and are constantly seeking to gain advantages over each other. They must continue to make high profits in order to sustain the constant research needed to produce new products. This research has grown in complexity and cost to the point that only profitable companies can engage in it. Therefore, they need to compete in both domestic and foreign markets in order to sustain their margins of profitability, which, in turn, requires that they engage in costly research to develop new products.
The race to introduce new and effective drugs has always come at the cost of danger to patients. Throughout the late Nineteenth Century, morphine and cocaine were administered without regard to their addictive qualities, with some companies and physicians even denying that they were addictive. Recognizing the problem of dangerous drugs and foods, the U.S. government enacted the Pure Food and Drugs Act in 1906 and the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in 1938 in an effort to clean up the food and drug industries.
Like the United States, other developed countries also established laws and guidelines for the production ...