Gross earnings aren't very meaningful when there's no cost basis. It always gets the natives riled up to hear about greedy _____ making BILLIONS in profit.

You need to look at the net earnings margin so you can see how earnings compared to revenue on a percentage basis.

I looked up an analysis of net earnings margin in % for all sectors and found that drug manufacturing (general) came in at 14%, which was the 15th highest among sectors in the economy. The highest was Financial Data and Stock Exchanges at 29.6%. Given the risk, regulation and R&D involved that doesn't seem unreasonable to me.