I think counting the losers is the great rhetorical trick pulled on the public by the pharmaceutical industry.
In what other industry do organizations get away with charging customers such exorbitant amounts of money to cover their failures?
In what other industry do organizations get away with charging customers such exorbitant amounts of money to cover their failures?
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/060115/how-much-dru...
Don't believe the hype. The total R&D cost of an entire industry has a tenuous connection to those for a single product or organization.
The lion's share of early stage R&D in pharmaceuticals happens in academia or start ups. The big players "acquire" the successful ones somewhere around phase II trials.
In the semiconductor industry, like pharma, failed startups go out of business and disappear. Intel would get laughed out of the room if they tried to claim the R&D costs of such failures as their own. Yet for some reason everyone buys this argument from the pharmaceutical companies.