The word "pharma" is correct and is used in written English
It is used to refer to the pharmaceutical industry, which is the branch of health care that focuses on the development, production, and distribution of medicines and other health-care products. For example, "Pharma companies are researching new treatments for cancer."
It is a template for the one sector of the Irish economy that has grown while all others have contracted: the multinational, hi-tech, big pharma, export-driven industrial base.
Some geeky types might drool at the promise of big data, but when ordinary people put big in front of an industry, it means they don't like it, whether it's big business, big oil, big pharma, big food, big sugar, big finance or big agriculture.
Plenty of attention is given to the issue of over-prescription of big pharma products, and there has been no shortage of publicity about illegal drugs, but the debates around them are completely different conversations.
On the one hand they expect "Big Pharma" to deliver ever more effective cures for the ills that beset them; on the other they decry the vast profits that the industry makes as in some way exploitative.
SIR —Your article outlining possible changes to the pharma business model incorrectly states that technologies such as high-throughput sequencing, genomics and personal phenotyping were not around five years ago.
But now, says Tachi Yamada of the Gates Foundation, who was at GSK when the firm faced the South African backlash over HIV drugs, "pharma companies can't possibly survive without recognising their responsibilities to the poor".Some firms have adopted "differential pricing" schemes that use formulas, based on average income per head, to set lower prices in poor countries.
But with experience, quality is improving.Given India's success in software a model for many Indian drugmakers it is no surprise that foreign pharma firms are turning to the country for IT skills.
But bad pharma is a global problem, which national drug-safety agencies are struggling to contain.
One of the goals of the new initiative is to prove to "big pharma" that microbicides could generate a big enough demand, and thus be worthy of the $500m investment that the foundation reckons it would need to bring a product to market.
That will knock away one of the arguments for big pharma: its ability to survive costly failures.
Sanofi also has plans to expand its IPV production capacity.Offering IPV at a deeply discounted price is likely to rattle big pharma companies.
