Pharma Baron Exposes His Shortcomings

The Naked Truth, a collaboration between Médecins Sans Frontières’ and Bare Films, is part of a raft of communications launched by the medical humanitarian charity to raise awareness and change the way new medicines, vaccines and tests are developed so that they can be made available to all people in need.

With classy visuals and operatic score, it wittily uses a game of strip poker to symbolise how pharmaceutical companies peddle myths about the high price of drugs research and development to unnecessarily inflate prices. In fact, 80 per cent of initial research in the US is funded by the taxpayer. Corporations claim billions are spent on later research and development but keep the actual figure secret.

The film tells the story of Bob, a fictitious pharma corporation exec taking part in a poker game. He starts off as a smug bigshot brandishing a large cigar, but, as he loses and has to strip naked, is forced to reveal what we assume is a rather lacklustre lunchbox – its exposure coinciding with the voiceover reporting that the actual figure spent on drugs research is not as big as Bob’s been making out…

The final reveal –  that in 2014 pharmaceuticals giants generated over US$1trillion in sales – clearly implies that certain drugs companies’ miscommunications about their costs is enabling them to make sizeable profits.