Casestudy: GlaxoSmithKline Flashcards
(11 cards)
1
Q
What is the case study for a pharmaceutical transnational?
A
GlaxoSmithKline
2
Q
Why have pharmaceutical companies been criticized?
A
- Making excess profits above average for large corporations
- Overcharging governments and individuals for lifesaving drugs
- Spending money ‘lobbying’ governments to ensure that regulations favor them
- Neglecting to sufficiently fund research in less profitable areas of drug dev
- Neglecting to research anti-biotics
3
Q
Where is GlaxoSmithKline headquartered?
A
In the UK
4
Q
In 2024, what was GlaxoSmithKline’s turnover?
A
- Almost 46 billion
- Medicines for acute and chronic diseases account for 2/3rd of this turnover
5
Q
What were the products of GlaxoSmithKline in 2019?
A
- 2.3 billion packs of medicine
- 701 million vaccine doses
- 4.2 billion consumer healthcare products
6
Q
How is GlaxoSmithKline a global company?
A
- GSK employs nearly 100k people
- It has 84 manufacturing sites in 36 different countries - with large research and development centres in USA, UK, Spain, Belgium and China
7
Q
What are examples of medicines produced from GlaxoSmithKline?
A
- Amoxicillin
- Zidovuline for HIV
- Bendazole for parasitic infections
8
Q
How does GSK contribute to investment?
A
- GSK has considerable investment in research and development
- GSK has 15k employed in R&D, spending more than £4.6B a year (10% of turnover) in researching new medicines
- GSK is one of the few healthcare companies currently researching treatments for WHOs three priority diseases: HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB.
- Drugs are expensive as developing and testing drugs is long and costly, with a high failure rate.
9
Q
What are problems with GSK?
A
- GSK and other pharmaceutical transnationals have demand for new drugs in LIDCs with weak economies, being too small for development costs.
10
Q
What vaccine is GSK currently working on?
A
- A vaccine against malaria
- Malaria infects 200M every year, and no new treatment has been developed since the 60s.
11
Q
What are ethical policies GSK adopted, and what do they do?
A
- A commitment to a small return - 5% - on each product sold
- Provides 3 HIV/AIDs drugs to LICs at significant discounts
- Grants licenses for manufacture of cheap generic versions of patented drugs
- Caps the price of patented drugs to 25% of UK price
- Invests 20% of its sale profits in each developing country
