Criticising the pharmaceutical industry is a type of sport, and it is astonishing what nonsense people will believe about it. For example, it has been said that pharmaceutical companies will only conduct a clinical trial against another product that will show their own product in a favourable light. This is a facile criticism. Of course pharmaceutical companies do not run clinical trials that can be predicted to have a negative outcome. Clinical trials are expensive and a pharmaceutical company is a commercial business. It does not make sense for any company in any industry to spend money advertising another company's product. What does make sense is for the competitor company to pay for the trial that shows their own product to be better; ipso facto the company with the better product pays for the trial.