you're wrong. or at least your facts don't mean much, do you realize how much merck, as an example, spends on their 10.000 scientists and how many labs they have costing over a million dollars that don't produce? the industry makes the money back on the rare drugs that get passed to recoup the 40 DOA projects they lose hundreds of millions on. look at the financials for the industry, they're not exactly running out of ways to spend money and gold-plating doorknobs.

Volume 5 Number 3 • May/June 2003
Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Impact R E P O R T
Development
ANALYSIS AND INSIGHT INTO CRITICAL DRUG DEVELOPMENT ISSUES
Post-approval R&D raises total drug
development costs to $897 million
Rapidly rising clinical period costs account for much of the total bill
The average out-of-pocket cost per new drug is $403 million, but capitalizing those
costs brings the total cost to $802 million (both in 2000 dollars).
Capitalized post-approval development costs raise the average total cost of new
drug R&D, including both pre- and post-approval phases, to $897 million.
Clinical period out-of-pocket costs have grown five times as fast as preclinical period
costs from the 1980s to the 1990s.
Drug development firms have become better at weeding out failures early in the development
process, yet only 21.5% of drugs that begin phase I clinical trials get to market.
During the 1990s, it took, on average, 90.3 months to go from the start of clinical
testing to regulatory approval, a decline from 98.9 months required in the 1980s.