Which of these is most deplorable: an organisation selling guns used to kill civilians; an organisation selling cigarettes that cause cancer; or one researching and producing drugs to cure disease and suffering?

Silly question? In the film of John le Carré's The Constant Gardener, one of the heroes describes drug companies as worse than gun runners. Somehow, the idea has taken hold that companies that make a profit by researching and conquering human illness are not a wonderful boon to humanity, but our enemy.

I run a think-tank in Brussels. I am proud that some of our funding comes from pharma companies, which do so much good. Yet we are attacked for taking money from them, as if they are somehow beyond the moral pale.

The latest figure to have a pop at pharma companies is Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, the chairman of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), who yesterday attacked them for ripping us off: “Pharmaceutical companies have enjoyed double-digit growth year on year and they are out to sustain that.”

It's perfectly legitimate to want to reform the pricing arrangements for drugs. Indeed, the Government has recently changed the NHS's purchasing methods. But more often than not, such discussions reveal a more fundamental criticism of the pharmaceutical industry: that the companies make profits. Everything would be so much better, it is argued, if the state or charities took charge of research, instead of letting big pharma take us for a ride.

Yes, drug firms make profits. That's what makes worthwhile their extraordinary investment in research. In 2003 the Tufts University Centre for the Study of Drug Development calculated that the total cost to research and develop a new prescription drug is $897 million. Only 21.5 per cent of drugs that reach human trials will even be approved for marketing.

The idea that the state or charities can offer a serious alternative is risible. Look at the research record where profit is barred. It wasn't Cuban or North Korean researchers who turned HIV from being a certain death sentence to a disease that can be managed. It was research by pharmaceutical companies.

In all of the Soviet Union's existence, where research was considered a priority, not one discovery was made that scientists in the free world considered worth using. The only Soviet discovery that had an impact in the West was weaponised anthrax.

Pharma companies are an easy target for some. But God help us if we have to live in a world devoid of their products, and get ill.

Times Recommends

• Five golden rules for regulating banks
• Uighurs’ cry echoes round the world
• It is not just democracy that is illegal