When Big Pharma Always Wins, Everyone Else Loses

🌍 When Big Pharma Always Wins, Everyone Else Loses

By Tina Winterlik / Zipolita

I’ve seen the headlines—Charleigh’s family fighting for a $1 million drug, doctors and even a minister pushed into a corner. The truth they hide is one we all feel: Big Pharma always wins.

Whether it’s Brineura for rare childhood diseases or the fentanyl poisoning epidemic, the same story unfolds—corporate profits grow, governments crumble, and real lives vanish.

💊 Why are we even here?

• Fentanyl deaths aren’t just personal tragedies—they’re systemic. The same profit-driven industries that choke us with drug costs fueled opioid overproduction.
• Doctors are abandoning the U.S. system in droves. About 20–35 % of physicians are thinking of leaving or reducing hours in the next two years—and 1 in 5 may exit completely (Axios).
• North America is seeing a migration of doctors fleeing restrictive policies, burnout, and a system that values profits over patients. Canada alone registered 116 U.S.-trained physicians in one quarter of 2025—a 50 % increase—while BC fast-tracked more licenses (Campus Safety Magazine).

That’s right: we’re being invaded—by Big Pharma and the exodus of caregivers.

🌱 And the roots of this crisis?

I was picking blueberries at my sister’s, feeling grounded—until I thought about fumes from the neighbour’s truck, and further afield, pesticide tractors. Even in nature, everything's tainted.

• Food is chemical. Soil is dying. Medicine is monopolized.
• Doctors leave because our health system is broken; food runs through poison; our bodies and spirits are disconnected from the Earth.

🧭 So what now?

I don’t have a map. But here’s a path:

1. Wake up—see how the systems are built to profit off our suffering.
2. Reconnect—grow food, swap seeds, learn earth healing, share meals.
3. Tell the truth—about fentanyl, farmers' fields, broken healthcare, children without nourishment.
4. Heal locally, heal naturally—make small ripples that shake big systems.

We might not topple Big Pharma tomorrow. But reclaiming our bodies, our food, our community is where resistance lives—and that’s where real healing begins.

🙏 For those dying from fentanyl, poisoning, addiction, disconnection. May we rise—home to Earth, to each other, to life.