I have a similar background as yours. There's definitely a middle ground to find about the pharmaceutical industry, but i don't think that its SPECIFICALLY more evil than any other industry.
Big pharmas are useful for society and generally very efficient at what they do, but it's also true that some decisions (to discontinue the production of a drugs, to end a promising project because the market is too small...) are made out of pure greed. This is true for any tech industry (with planned obsolescence and its impact on the environment for example).
The real question here is: should health be just another industry following a capitalistic logic or should the dynamic and rules be different ? I don't have the answer but i think that's how we should consider the problem.